Queen 'Innuendo'

Chart Peak: UK 1
YouTube

Yes, we're more than a week into the months already and I haven't started an album yet. It doesn't leave a lot of time for a double album so as a quick diversion I'm going to make a one-off excursion into the overseas Now albums.

I happened across this South African Now 14 in a charity shop in Pinner a couple of weeks ago. At least, I eventually concluded it was South African from the "made in RSA" legend on the CD. Discographical info is pretty scant online, but I did succeed in finding that a Now 14 was released there in 1991, which would tally with the release date of the songs featured here. Sleeve notes for the album are literally non-existent (the inner pages of the booklet are blank) so I can't tell you which are the two bonus tracks. Nor have I been able to find any South African charts for this period; there seems to be no tradition of a singles sales chart in the country, only airplay charts in any case.

At least we have the songs, and it's tempting to quip that nothing changes anywhere in the world, with a Now album from another continent still opening with a Queen track. Ironically, 'Innuendo' is one of the few Queen inclusions that doesn't open a UK Now or even a side of one - it's the very last track on our Now 19. Of course, Queen appearing on a South African album immediately prompts thoughts of the controversy about them playing Sun City in the previous decade; but by 1991 they were effectively incapable of performing anywhere and of course by the end of the year Freddie Mercury was dead. Though he wasn't open about his illness at the time, it's easy to find hints of it in hindsight; the title track of the last album the group released in his lifetime is grandiose even by Queen standards, a clear attempt to do another 'Bohemian Rhapsody'. In fact 'Innuendo' is slightly longer than their signature hit, composed from multiple sections with all four band members having contributed to the writing. There's even a star guest: Steve Howe from Yes on guitar in the middle section. Inevitably, the effect is contrived and Roger Taylor's typically platitudinous lyrics do little to help, even as they nod to the mood of the early 1990s by bemoaning political division. Mercury's vocal power is sadly already diminished and the song falls between two stools: too overcomplicated to work on it's own terms but not overblown enough to be proper Queen.

Available on: Innuendo (2011 Remaster)

Freddie Mercury 'The Great Pretender'

Chart Peak: 4

YouTube

Following the success of 'Love Kills' and 'I Was Born To Love You', Freddie's new solo single is 'The Great Pretender'. The song was originally a hit for the Australian singer Jimmy Parkinson in 1956 and also the Platters later that same year.

So, Side 3 starts with another old song - it's a cover like the Boy George track on Side 2, and it dates back to the 1950s like the Jackie Wilson number back on Side 1. It's nearer in style to Wilson of course, being a doo-wop song; the Platters version is the true original (it was written by their manager Buck Ram) even though Parkinson beat them to the UK chart.

Back in 1987 I wouldn't have known the origin, though I remember it was a song I already knew and recognised as old. I was too young to wonder why he was covering the song at the time, but looking back it is slightly odd - the track wasn't from his solo album in 1985, and nor did it relate to his Barcelona album with Montserrat Caballé later in 1987. In fact, the track didn't show up on an album until 1992's posthumous Freddie Mercury Album (it was re-issued as a single from that album and became a minor hit). With a bit more hindsight though, we know now that it would have been around this time when he discovered he had HIV, although he of course didn't reveal this publicly until the day before his death; his partner Jim Hutton claimed that he was diagnosed around Easter 1987, but presumably he'd suspected for a while. In that context, of course, the song of a man "pretending that I'm doing well" takes on a different poignancy.

Unfortunately, as a record it doesn't entirely work. Mercury was still capable of a belting vocal, but it's a bit of a mismatch with the song itself, which doesn't have the same bombast as a Queen original. He bellows too hard to make it plausible that he ever concealed anything. The production is a bit empty as well, and the effect is rather a hollow exercise.

Also appearing on: Now 10, 23 [both with Montserrat Caballé], 25
Available on: Greatest Hits III

Queen 'I Want To Break Free'

Chart Peak: 3
YouTube
Side Three starts with another song of escape, albeit a somewhat lighter-hearted one. And proof that Queen aren't always the first track on a Now album, though they usually start a side.

'I Want To Break Free' was the second single from their album The Works and managed to spend three consecutive weeks at 3 in the charts; all of them were behind Phil Collins at 2, but there were two different Number One singles involved. Sales were perhaps helped by the fact that this was a different mix from the album track: unusually, the single edit is longer thanks to that dramatic intro. They were surely also assisted by the track's memorable promo video, which I can even remember seeing at the time. The cross-dressing allegedly caused some controversy in the USA, although as a British six-year-old raised on pantomimes, I didn't think there was anything particularly strange about it, it was just a little bit silly that Freddie Mercury still had his moustache while he was in drag. I hadn't noticed at that point that he does actually appear clean-shaven in one of the fantasy sequences.

The song was written by John Deacon, probably my favourite member of Queen, not least because he was the only one never to attempt a solo career and the one who seems to have been least involved in the disreputable attempts to keep the band going after Mercury's death. In a band of showmen, he was the calm sideman. Although my favourite of his was 'Another One Bites The Dust', which is too early for the series, this inclusion means that all four members of Queen individually appear on the Now albums as songwriters, as well as tracks credited to them collectively.  It lacks the emotional burden of the Bronski Beat track, seeming more a work of imagination, but when I say it's one of Queen's best ever pop songs I don't consider that at all a bad thing.


Also appearing on: Now 2, 4, 6, 7, 15, 16, 19, 21, 25 [with George Michael], 32, 33, 54 [with Vanguard]
Available on: Greatest Hits II

Queen 'Too Much Love Will Kill You'

Chart Peak: 15

YouTube

'Too Much Love Will Kill You' was originally a Top 5 hit for Brian May in 1992... This new version, with the late Freddie Mercury's powerful vocals, is released on 26th February 1996.

As you might have guessed, it's not really that new a version. It predates May's solo version, having been recorded in the late 80s for their album The Miracle but left off, reportedly due to contractual problems with the co-writers. It was apparently a personal song for May, hence the release of his own version, but the original was dusted off for the posthumous Made In Heaven album - unlike much of that set, no work seems to have been done on it in the 1990s so the production is even more dated than the rest, showing Queen's least enjoyable and most blandly sentimental side. Mercury's vocal is always going to be an improvement over May's, of course, though it did lead Rob Newman to make the harsh if not entirely inaccurate joke that "No Freddie, too much unprotected sex will kill you".

It doesn't make for the most dramatic opener to Now 33, in all honesty, but it does give Queen the distinction of being the first act to open consecutive Now albums. It's also the first non-Top-10 hit to open one, and still the only one I can think of, aside from the 'Grease Megamix' (a Top 10 hit but long before it opened Now 40). Of course, the record didn't last long since the Spice Girls went on to open Now 34, 35 and 36. It's also the group's last new material to appear in the series; though two further singles were pulled from Made In Heaven and inquorate versions of the act have managed hits since, their only subsequent showing was the reworking of 'Flash' on Now 54.


Also appearing on: Now 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 15, 16, 19, 21, 25 [with George Michael], 32, 54 [with Vanguard]
Available on: Greatest Hits III

Queen 'One Vision'

Chart Peak: 7

YouTube

Queen's first single of 1985 - released in early November. 'One Vision' is a tribute to Bob Geldof's "Live Aid" work and is destined to become the group's 27th Top 40 single in Britain.

Yes, we're still in the sixes, and back to vinyl this time. Back to the familiar Queen opener on a Now! album too. Now 6 is also the first one not to have a pig on the cover, beginning the series of themed designs that lasted a few year: this one is obviously supposed to be a jacket, Now 7 was a bag, Now 9 a school folder etc. My copy isn't in the best of condition but I bought quite early on before I realised how common this album was. Anyway, it's enough for the purposes here, and this present track is not a difficult one to hear in any case.

'One Vision' was arguably a very important song in consolidating the comeback they'd made in 1984. It obviously wasn't part of their landmark performance at Live Aid, but was released soon only a few months afterwards to pick up some of the momentum while it was still fresh in people's minds. Indeed, whilst sources seem to vary as to whether the song is actually about Live Aid, it's often said to be inspired by the confidence the band had regained that day. Certainly the single was rushed out within weeks of recording, over six months before the album where it ended up. It also has a writing credit to the entire band,  before this became their standard practice, which suggests a level of enthusiasm and collaboration between the band. Whilst the optimistic lyric, partly cribbed from Martin Luther King, doesn't necessarily stand up to great scrutiny - it's not really a powerful statement if nobody could disagree with it - it's good fodder for Freddie Mercury, at the top of his game, to bellow. The riff is powerful, simple and indeed powerfully simple, an obvious ancestor to 'I Believe In A Thing Called Love' by the Darkness; in fact that's an interesting comparison, because the latter song expresses similar sentiments but in a more smirking way. Queen at their best could be utterly ridiculous but be saved by the total commitment they showed to the song. Even the joke they sneak in at the end, a massive build-up that ends "Gimme... Fried chicken!" works entirely because it's delivered with such conviction. The official Olympic version of the song omits that and is all the poorer for it.

Also appearing on: Now 2, 3, 4, 7, 15, 16, 19, 21, 25 [with George Michael], 32, 33, 54 [with Vanguard]
Available on: Rock Anthems

Queen 'Breakthru'

Chart Peak: 7


YouTube

'Breakthru' was the 2nd of 4 British hits so far in 1989 for Freddie, Brian, Roger and John... It reached No. 7 in July.

As it turned out, they made it to five singles by the end of the year, all drawn from The Miracle, which is the album where they're all merged into that slightly creepy five-eyed monster on the cover. More seriously, it's also the first album they made in the knowledge that Freddie Mercury was terminally ill (though it was of course a secret from the general public at the time). Heard it that context, it's possible to interpret the chorus lyric "Break through these barriers of pain" in a slightly different way from how they'd have sounded at the time, although apparently this song was written primarily by Roger Taylor; it's officially credited a group competition. And it must be said that Mercury still looks in pretty good shape in the video, although he had less than three years to go by then. And while we're on the subject of lyrical misinterpretation, I've only recently realised he's singing "Your face fills my mind" in the first verse and not, as I'd thought for about twenty years, "your face feels like mine".

External facts aside 'Breakthru' is a good potboiler of a song that just doesn't quite sound as good as it should, somehow. I'm resisting the obvious pun here, but it's one those records that always sounds punchier and more convincing in my memory than when I actually listen to it. Perhaps the fault lies in overproduction, which is a common failing of the band's work in this era, and to be fair of many others too. Still, a song it's no hardship to be reminded of.

Also appearing on: Now 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 15, 19, 21, 25 [with George Michael], 32, 33, 54 [with Vanguard]
Available on: The Miracle

Queen 'A Kind Of Magic'

Chart Peak: 3

YouTube

You see, that's what makes Now 7 different from every other album in the series - it's the only one I know of that features a hidden track. Presumably they only got permission to include this song after the sleeve had gone to press. And Queen's punishment for this brinkmanship was demotion from their usual spot at the very start of the album to the back end of Side 3.

I'd entirely forgotten that this song appears (in a somewhat different form) in the film Highlander; though I do remember seeing the film at school a few years later I'd presumably lost interest by this point. It's obvious once you know though, with the various lyrical references like "there can be only one". In 1986 it was just a song to me, and one I could hardly fail to remember. Listening to the two versions now I have to award a lot of the credit to Freddie Mercury for restructuring and re-arranging Roger Taylor's song from the film version to the more familiar production featured on the single and album (and here of course). Though hardly revolutionary, it's a well-constructed pop record and on that basis one of my favourite Queen hits. Ironically, it's Taylor's dull click-track drumming that's the weakest point in the finished article.

Also appearing on: Now 2, 3, 4, 6, 15, 16, 19, 21, 25 [with George Michael], 32, 33, 54 [with Vanguard]
Available on: The Platinum Collection

Queen 'Heaven For Everyone'

Chart Peak: 2

YouTube

This post should probably start with a warning: we're embarking on Now 32, which came out when I was 17. Over the next 40 posts there are likely to be more outbreaks of enthusiasm than anyone not born between about 1974 and 1982 is likely to find reasonable. We're probably also going to be hearing the word "Britpop" a lot.

At the start of the album though, we're in much more conventional territory for Now albums: Queen. Out of thirteen appearances (including collaborations), no fewer than seven are in the coveted Disc One, Side One, Track One position; two more start the second disc. You could even make it eight out of fourteen if you allow for the fact that 'Radio Gaga' opens the CD version of Now 4. It was never terribly surprising that their career wasn't ended by the demise of Freddie Mercury, but it wasn't necessarily to be expected that they'd show up with a whole album of seemingly new material when they'd released Innuendo less than a year before his demise. The reason they managed it was, of course, that not all the material turned out to be new, much of it being outtakes from previous sessions or reworkings of material from solo projects. Once upon a time, this song was a Number 84 hit for Roger Taylor's side-project The Cross - but whilst Taylor himself fronts that single, their album features instead a version sung by Freddie Mercury, from which the vocal was extracted to create this, the lead single from what I keep wanting to call a posthumous album, even though 75% of the lineup were still alive when it came out. 

'Heaven For Everyone' is a fairly typical well-meaning Taylor song full of hopeful sentiments but not wholly convincing. As I'm sure Taylor would be the first to admit, Mercury's vocal performanace lifts this a good few notches, and the Queen version is an improvement over the original production. But with hindsight, it's hard to imagine the Top 3 success of this single not being heavily dependant on sentiment.

Also appearing on: Now 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 15, 16, 19, 21, 25 [with George Michael], 33, 54 [with Vanguard]
Available on: Made In Heaven

Queen 'It's A Hard Life'

Chart Peak: 6

YouTube

Well, I knew this was the third of four consecutive Top Ten hits from their album The Works, but I had no memory of it before writing this post. Knowing how big Queen were at the time, it's not plausible that I never heard it, so I must assume that it was getting played on the radio between 'Too Late For Goodbyes' and 'Together In Electric Dreams' and I just didn't notice it.

It doesn't leave much of an impression on me now either. It seems to push the usual Queen buttons but without much to attract attention. Maybe it was just so each member of the band got a single off this album. Apparently they all thought Freddie Mercury looked like a prawn in the video. Er, you can tell I'm struggling for things to say here, can't you? Sorry. I can understand why the Now 4 CD went with the more memorable 'Radio Gaga' instead.

Also appearing on: Now 2, 3, 6, 7, 15, 16, 19, 21, 25 [with George Michael], 32, 33, 54 [with Vanguard]
Available on: The Works

Freddie Mercury and Montserrat Caballé 'Barcelona'

Chart Peak: 2 (8 in 1987)

YouTube

And what better way to follow a duet by a dead man and a woman who's still alive than another one? Although this is one of two tracks duplicated from earlier albums in the series, this is one I've written about before so there's no need to say anything much more about it in this post, except to note that its reappearance was due to its originally intended use as theme of the 1992 Olympics. The BBC also used it extensively in TV coverage of the Games, and somewhere between this massive publicity and some sentimentality in the wake of Mercury's death less than a year before, it managed to chart higher than it had the first time.

Instead, I'll take the opportunity to reinvent the conclusion posts I used to do in mentioning that this track seems almost too perfect a summation of the Now 23, which seems exceptionally heavy on secondhand material. It's fair enough that some tracks are repeated over the history of the series, as new generations of buyers emerge, but this is one of four old tracks re-issued here (defined as records from previous decades), plus four re-workings (from Was Not Was, Erasure Heaven 17 and Roy Orbison) and the posthumous Bob Marley track. Throw in another five cover versions and you've accounted for nearly half the album already. It mightn't matter so much were it not that so few of the new acts who feature here seem to have made all that much long-term impact. If this were the only evidence you had of pop music in the second half of 1992 (er, and January when that Simply Red track came out) you'd have to conclude that things had gone a bit wrong somewhere.

Freddie Mercury also appears on: Now 9, 25.
Available on: Barcelona

Queen 'Radio Gaga'

Chart Peak: 2

YouTube

Worryingly, this blog has now started costing me money: as the image below shows, I have invested the sum of 95p in a copy of Now II (as it's officially called - it remains "Now 2" in the tags for clarity's sake) for no better reason than to blog about it. My hopes of being able to quote from the sleeve notes haven't entirely come to fruition, since they are mostly not all that illuminating: the one for this track tells me merely that it "Charted on 31 January at No.4. Was No.2 the first two weeks of February." and gives the catalogue number for the album it came from. Thanks guys.

At least having the record does enable me to confirm that the version used is the full five minutes and 43, rather than the shorter version from the 7" single. And 'Radio Ga Ga' seems like a song that doesn't need much introduction. Although denied the top chart position by an even bigger hit that we'll come to later on this album, it remains one of the the more familiar Queen songs and it's certainly one that I remember very well from the time, although ironically enough considering the subject matter, I remember the video as much as the song. Of course, back then I didn't realise it was supposed to be a reference to Metropolis but the imagery was striking enough in its own right.

All this seems to hint at one of the many paradoxes that seem to surround Queen: the fact that an act who were so keen to embrace the possibilities of the pop video (and are sometimes even credited with inventing the form, although this is hard to justify) should find themselves having such a big hit with a song of nostalgia for the old way of doing things. All the more ironic, indeed, that this is a track where the band who used to write on their album covers that they hadn't used synthesisers capitulated to the drum machine and programmed basslines, to say nothing of the slightly annoying backing vocals where Roger Taylor sings "Ra-dio" through a Vocoder. None of these things is necessarily bad, but they make a confusing combination. Whilst it sounds rather like a filler shoved in to make for a rhyme, even the song itself seems to acknowledge this with the line "We hardly have to use our ears/Our music changes through the years."

To be fair to Taylor, the song is supposed to be about radio as a whole, not just music broadcasting. But it's still a bit difficult to tell whether the implication is that radio itself has gone wrong or merely that the public have abandoned it. It's just another layer of confusion. So much so that, as with many a Queen record, I can't really tell whether I like it or not.


Also appearing on: Now 3, 4, 6, 7, 15, 16, 19, 21, 25 [with George Michael], 32, 33, 54 [with Vanguard]
Available on: Greatest Hits, Vol. 2

Freddie Mercury & Montserrat Caballé 'Barcelona'

Chart Peak: 8

YouTube

It was just a chance remark, really, when a commenter mentioned that he was ten years old when Now 44 came out. With another birthday coming up (hint, hint) my thoughts turned to the current Now album at the time of my own tenth birthday, which rather symmetrically proves to be Now 10. And there's some minor historical import to it too, as the first album in the series to be given a complete CD release, as opposed to the truncated single-disc versions that had been toyed with before. As you can see though, the running time is still kept down to two hours so it fits comfortably on a double LP. I might get this one done within the month.

Anyway, they've picked a nice subtle track to start with here. Actually, it does seem a bit out of place as an opener - it has grand finale written all over it. Apparently 'Barcelona' was commissioned as a theme song for the 1992 Olympic games, hence the presence of native Barcelonan Caballe. 1987 might have seemed a bit early to be doing that but then again, it seems wise in retrospect since Mercury didn't live to see 1992 itself. This seems to have come as news to whoever placed the advert on YouTube to tell us we could get the latest news about him in The Sun. Certainly, he throws himself wholeheartedly into the idiom, but then that's no surprise from the man behind 'Bohemian Rhapsody': it's the dozens over overdubbed Freddies bellowing "Baar-ceLOna" that really grabs your attention, sounding almost more operatic than the actual opera singer on the record. In fact, when I read that the legendary unreleased, unbootlegged, unheard by anyone not massively off their faces (except George Martin, presumably) Beatles track 'Carnival Of Light' features repetitive shouts of "Barcelona", this is always what it reminds me of.
Still, there's something in here that doesn't totally seem to work; possibly it lies in the slight lack of chemistry between the two leads, or maybe it just seems to fall between two stools - as a pop record it doesn't have the same force as some of the operatic rock Queen used to make, and it obviously doesn't have the same weight as true classical music would. Also, if you don't want to deafen yourself during the loud bits you can't really hear the quiet sections properly.

On a totally irrelevant note, doesn't he look weird without the moustache?


Freddie Mercury also appears on: Now 9, 25. [This track is repeated on Now 23]
Available on: The Very Best of Freddie Mercury