Freddie Mercury was dying. Very few of the people buying “Innuendo” knew it – most would have heard the rumours that the singer had AIDS, or seen the constant tabloid speculation around the ‘ailing rocker’. But they would have also heard Mercury’s denials. So this single has a particularly unusual context – almost entirely hidden at the time, hard to avoid now. How you rate “Innuendo” might well depend on how much you hear it as a last – or close-to-last – message to fans and world, a big blocky cry against the dying of the light.
The problem with this line of thinking is that anthems were Queen’s stock in trade – almost every record has one or two singles which could have been suitably valedictory if tragedy had struck post-release. So it’s worth rewinding back to 1991 and remembering how “Innuendo” sounded – to me, at any rate – when it actually hit. It seemed a rather cynical record – fanbase mobilisation a la Iron Maiden but with the added twist that here was the group bowing to demand and making a new “Bohemian Rhapsody”, a sprawling multipart epic.
Compared to “Bohemian Rhapsody”, though, this is flat. The bulk of the record – the opening and closing stretches, with those Bolero-style rhythms and Freddie in semi-spoken, declamatory mode – only made sense to me when I found out the band had Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” in mind. There’s something of that record’s elemental quality here – Mercury sounds like a man on an endless plain with thunder gathering overhead – but on “Kashmir” the storm regularly breaks while on “Innuendo” the clouds just thicken while Mercury rants on. It’s a bleak and ominous track, but also hectoring and oddly purposeless – when the song resolves back into this plod after its middle section it’s a disappointment.
So what about that middle bit, where Queen break their forced march and make good on the whole genre-switching idea? For “Bo Rhap”‘s mock-opera swap “Innuendo”‘s duelling flamenco solos – one by Steve Howe, just to underline the whole back-to-prog vibe! – but here the interlude risks killing the momentum not boosting it. The best part of the track, and the one moment which does genuinely possess some of that 1975 spark, is the synth orchestra on the “Be free with your ego” section. It’s surprising, it’s very pretty, and Mercury sounds engaged and urgent. If you do take this single as part of a farewell, what better leave-behind than “just turn yourself into anything you want to be?”. And when the massed harmonies tumble into a solo, it’s just like old times. But then the moment passes, and the clouds roll in again.
Score: 5
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Excellent review Tom. What’s most surprising about this one (only their second unaugmented no 1 after many near misses) is what an obscurity it’s become. It was in and out of the charts in 5 weeks during which its musical qualities were overlooked in favour of speculating why the video had no current footage of Freddie and radio hasn’t touched it since, the usual fate of over-long records that aren’t much cop.
The whole album had a rushed, half-baked feel to it which isn’t surprising given the circumstances.
I didn’t really understand this song at the time, and it’s easy to see why. It goes against every idea of what you expect a pop single to be – long, multi-sectioned, lacking in a central idea, no catchy tune… of course you could say the same about Bohemian Rhapsody, but songs that big exist outside the normal rules of the game. This sounds like the epitomy of an album track, typical side b track 5, the one before last, not bad but obviously not the single, except it was, and it got to number one, so it must be me that’s wrong.
Three number ones, all very unusual, but all distinctly average in terms of quality. What’s up with 1991?
There are three reasons why I don’t comment on some Popular entries:
A) I’ve changed my mind about a particular record since I wrote my specially pre-written comments on it and haven’t got the time (or in some cases the inclination) to do a complete revision (which doesn’t mean that I won’t go back and do one at a later date but usually it means that I don’t feel the urgency to revise).
B) Some records are too personal for me to talk about on a public forum.
C) Records and artists, and/or associated events, with whom or which I have a personal connection.
As “Innuendo” falls under category C I’ll sit this one out, but have given it a mark out of ten which in this case I’m also going to keep confidential.
“here was the group bowing to demand and making a new “Bohemian Rhapsody””
I dunno, this feels a little unfair to me. If anything it seemed more like this was the band going back to making the kind of stuff they wanted to make, rather than ineptly chasing trends the way they’d done through much of the 80s.
#3, Out of interest, which was the reason for Iron Maiden?
#4 well, this was my impression in 1991, remember. I think I was probably a bit unfair too – especially as Bo Rhap was hardly the only multi-part record they put together. But it seems a fair comparison even if their motivations were a bit purer.
# 4 In turn Jim I think the line about “ineptly chasing trends” is a bit unfair. With four independent songwriters in the band they were unusually open to many different influences and I don’t think even the most diehard Queen fan would claim to like every song. “Hot Space” (which I’m guessing is at the forefront of your thinking) was a botched attempt to follow up the US success of their own “Another One Bites The Dust” rather than follow the prevalent New Pop trend.
Although it doesn’t excite me greatly, I really don’t dislike this track; the secrecy – the innuendo of the title – and its utter lack of transparency are clearly part of its core. And better an inferior BoRhap than an inferior version of much of their more recent output.
(Although I still think of 1982’s “Body Language”, and for that matter “Los Palabras de Amor” as kind of minor lost classics, both rather untypical of Queen, that really deserve to be lifted from the obscurity in which they have remained. LPDA in particular is a thing of beauty, while Body Language is….funky. Really.)
I still wonder if “These Are The Days Of Our Lives” – clearly, by a long way, the strongest single released from the album – was intentionally held back to serve as a fitting tribute to Mercury, once it became utterly clear that there were very few of those days in his life on this earth remaining. By conventional measures it arguably might have made a more obvious “first single from the album” than this, which I have to agree is, in essence, a proficient but slightly dull album track. 5 or 6/10 sounds about right,
As Tom said, this was one that had no hoopla beyond the snazzy sleeve, and the song/track was free of the usual “Freddieness”, and was the first Queen single I’d actively liked since “Under Pressure”, possibly for the same reason.
I dunno about holding “These are the days of our lives” as a fitting tribute, but I shall opine no further until the (obviously to be enormous) [bunny]
1991 is quite the year for monsters of pop/rock bagging #1s by making them sound (and often look, via big budget music videos) like huge events and the media and fanbase responding accordingly. There’s at least two more examples to come and if Guns n’ Roses had released ‘November Rain’ as the first single from the Use Your Illusion LPs they might have managed it too.
The “you can be anything you want to be…” and defiant “we’ll keep on trying” parts and the subsequent bursts of operatic harmonising are definitely this bloated affair’s strengths.
#5: Iron Maiden – category A.
@1: Different strokes for different folks I guess. What you hear as being rushed and half baked, I hear as immediate. The feeling of “we must get this down, we don’t know how much time we’ve got” lends the album freshness that is not apparent on many of their other records – at least for me. Compare and contrast Innuendo with Made In Heaven (practically produced in the same circumstances – with Mercury laying vocal tracks down then going to bed/rest whilst the rest of the band worked on the music). The rest of Queen had ages to make Made In Heaven and it’s nowhere near as good as Innuendo. I’d go so far as to say Innuendo is their best album since The Game way back in 1980 and is better than at least a couple of their albums from the 70s.
Unfortunately, Innuendo is not the best of tracks to support my case – as it is quite lumpen, only really taking off with the introduction of Steve Howe and the blistering reply solo from Brian May – but I find Headlong to be a fun bouncy rocker, I’m Going Slightly Mad and Delilah to be lightweight throwaways and These Are The Days Of Our Lives and The Show Must Go On as some of the strongest songs of Queen’s post 1980 period as well. As a kid I was, and indeed remain, fascinated by Bijou too – I think Brian May is on record as saying that he wanted to experiment in creating a song where the guitar played the role of the voice and the voice played the role of the guitar – only getting a little solo in the middle. The album’s real weak points are The Hitman (which stretches its thinly veiled AIDS as assassin theme too far over a pretty pedestrian rock backing) and its tendency to be overly “carpe diem” – but I can give them a pass on that I reckon, given the circumstances.
Innuendo gets a 6 from me, primarily for the middle section, which I’d happily listen to the song for alone. But I can’t really go much higher, as musically competent though it is, it’s too long. Bohemian Rhapsody is nearly 6 minutes and doesn’t feel like it. Innuendo is 6 and a half minutes long – and feels every second of that, except for the sprightly mid section.
As an aside: from here on until about 2008, I can at least hum a few bars of almost every number one single in the UK. This is pretty much the point at which my interest in pop started – aged 9.
Weird record to start with perhaps. Basically, it’s down to my Mum. She is a huge Queen fan and their music was around the house an awful lot whilst I was growing up. When I hear this record, I don’t really see the video or any Queen associated imagery – I see my mum singing along to it with the kitchen door open, listening to it playing on our brand new CD player in the living room. Cheers Mum (and indeed Dad – who listened to a lot of 50s rock and roll when I was a kid and gave me Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry and Little Richard as lifelong interests – good presents I think).
i’m trying to decide what i think IS “typical of queen” — anything you pick as a signature seems unlike far more other queen songs than it’s like
Erm, I must apologise for accidently disturbing the bunny and mixing up my suggested requiem songs. I meant to refer to “The Show Must Go On” in @8 above (even though “These are…” is a superior song)
#7 Well yes, I was thinking of bits of Hot Space (although there’s still lots to love on that album) but also other odd clutches at populism through the rest of the decade – Machines from The Works, or Don’t Lose Your Head from A Kind of Magic, and of course 89’s The Invisible Man. It wasn’t meant to be harsh though. I think the way lots of their 80s work did try and fail to emulate other musical trends is at worst endearing, and quite often resulted in songs which, though odd, were still great in their own ways.
#3 When you say pre-written do you mean you wrote all your pieces en masse at the start of Popular or they were originally written for another purpose ?
Let’s just say that I prepare a tranche of them in advance at regular intervals.
I enjoyed this much more than I’d expected to. It’s yet another strange song to feature at number 1 in 1991, with it’s mixture of arabic sounding verse, anthemic chorus and a flamenco showdown thrown in for good measure. Given that the first Gulf war was going on at the time the UK appetite for its middle-eastern qualities seems quite encouraging. It’s hard to imagine a similar sounding act getting such a reception (from the media at least) nowadays – but I’d be happy to be corrected.
#14, ah yes fair enough.
Although “The show must go on” would have made a more ‘appropriate’ or even “schmaltzy” post-mortem tribute, I’m glad they avoided that.
#19 The Show Must Go On was released 6 weeks before Freddie Mercury died (ostensibly to promote their Greatest Hits II package – and has a suitably patched together from old bits video to go with it – but let’s face it, they must have know this would be the last single to be released before Freddie Mercury passed on).
Freddie looked like a very different person without the moustache (fellow ’91 charter Vic Reeves is someone else I think of as two different performers on account of the difference a pair of spectacles alone seemed to make) and I had a reaction similar to when Elton swapped the hat for that awful wig.
I love portmanteau songs. “Paranoid Android”, “Biology”, “Jesus of Suburbia” and this. I like the spanish guitar bits and the strangely empty echoey quiet bits and the coda. I don’t like most of Queen, but this is ace.
I don’t think it should be considered only as a lesser BR, or judged against the length of life left in the singer, but I can see how it would be odd for some people to like – same as any portmanteau song. Some people like the choppiness of them and some prefer internal consistency.
Also this is one of the only Number Ones where I can remember exactly where I was when I heard it had charted. I was in town for my birthday, waiting to meet people and on my own listening to the radio part of my walkman (I always got one with a radio). It seemed to go very well with a cold teatimey dark bus-station.
I don’t think I’d heard this for twenty years. I’m afraid that my reaction was no different to my eighteen year-old one: When on earth is this pompous, platitudinous, effortful, spendthrift slog going to finish?
The most interesting aspect of this particular stretch of number ones is that what with Cliff, Iron Maiden and Queen all enjoying chart toppers with lesser material, the release-scheduling and marketing departments at EMI were clearly at the top of their game at that point in time, even if their acts weren’t.
I like this. The ‘Kashmir’ thing couldn’t be more obvious, but then I wouldn’t’ve heard that in 91, plus it’s a pretty cool aesthetic to take to no.1 anyway.
It does bring home Robert Plant’s merits as a singer though. I was just thinking that Freddie’s delivering an excellent vocal, considering – but Plant would blow this away for power, depth, timing and everything. I don’t think it’s an inappropriate comparison – like I say, Freddie does well and he’s about as good as I’ve ever heard him, to my ears.
Also, I don’t think I’ve ever heard Flamenco that I didn’t like. Beautiful stuff.
When “Innuendo” reached #1 I felt…well I can’t honestly remember how I felt. So it comes as no surprise that on listening to it now, it just makes me feel incredibly sad. The image of Freddie, as easily the best and most compelling frontman at Live Aid is the one I prefer to remember him by. The fateful drum roll gives way to synths and Brian May’s grand guitar motif. And then…Freddie, elevated in his tower, calling into a vast amphitheatre where the faithful gather to hear his words,”keep tryin’ until the end of time”, ultimately a promise he knows he cannot keep. The fact that he, or the rest of the band had not been involved in the promo video, which was on heavy rotation on MTV,(that I do remember) must have signalled to the Queen faithful, that all was indeed not well, that Freddie was weakening. Not that you’d notice on the strength of this vocal. He had some fight left in him, didn’t he?
And I agree with most, that the middle section with Steve Howe is a little gem, a proper eye of the storm interlude. In hindsight the, “Surrender your ego/Be free to yourself” line is the doomed prophet passing on wisdom to his disciples. He knows he doesn’t have much time left. So the whole Innuendo album lays down the groundwork for a last farewell to the army of fans who elevated Queen to one of the most, if not the most, beloved British band since The Beatles. That is to say not necessarily the critics’ choice, but maybe the people’s choice. I’d like to think that was the case, anyway.
@24: You can judge for yourself whether Robert Plant would have done a better job. He sang it at the Mercury Tribute concert. It’s on Youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7LM9s3Lm4A
I actually liked this at the time, and I don’t like most Queen singles (a fact I’ve apologised to fans – including my mother – for so many times that I won’t bother doing it again here). Oddly, I think the reasons I liked it are precisely the same reasons Tom has such a difficult time with it. I liked the fact that it’s doomy, desolate, howl-against-the-hurricane stuff, and sounded less cocky and knowing than most of Mercury’s performances. “Bohemian Rhapsody”, for example, is guilty of prog silliness in the Gilbert and Sullivan middle section, but “Innuendo” manages to keep a consistent mood going despite its equally fragmented structure.
Listening to it again for the first time in years, I’m actually still stunned by its sheer force. I disagree with the fact that it’s an overwhelmingly overcast record – the “We’ll keep on trying” chorus actually sounds like colour trying to break through, only to be bleached out by Freddie in his “harbinger of doom and gloom” mode on return to the main verses. Even the slight upwards shift in the guitar riff from the “We’ll keep on trying” line to after the “Tread that fine line” part is an optimistic ascension, only obviously not one that ultimately wins overall. The main part of the song isn’t quite as straight-down-the-line negative and bluesy as a lot of the grunge rock which would come screaming through at the tail end of 1991, and for my money is a hell of a lot more interesting for that.
Despite Mercury’s rumoured illness, I also seem to remember that the band were taking critical hammerings from a variety of sources at this point, including Dave Lee Travis of all people who I seem to remember got people phoning in complaints when he slagged off “I’m Going Slightly Mad” (which, to be fair to the hairy cornflake, wasn’t a very good choice of single). The band had never been terribly popular with the critics, of course, but for some reason the early part of 1991 really sticks out in my memory as a point where just about everybody had it in for the band. Much as I’m not a Queen fan by any stretch of anyone’s imagination, I did love the sheer defiance of taking something as ungainly and bleak sounding as this to number one.
Sod it, this gets a 7 from me.
Having two Queen-loving brothers I’m well aware of their history without being a fully-fledged fan. Listen back to their albums and their are some audacious follies – Brighton Rock, Mustapha, Get Down Make Love, Machines (Back to Humans) all of which make Innuendo sound ordinary despite it’s unconventional structure.
They’re a band who I admire for their showmanship even if I have mixed reactions to the music.
Ah, I reviewed this for Leeds Student, if memory serves, and in all probability described it as the very worst moment in the history of recorded music. As, however, I haven’t knowingly had to listen to it at any time in the succeeding two decades, I feel a whole less strongly about it.
Pissing off the appalling DLT is an honour which hopefully Mercury took some comfort in during his last days. A badge of honour, so to speak.
If you weren’t a fan, this was a “blink and you miss it” number one, and for me the beginning of the modern era of Popular. Even Iron Maiden had the good grace to stay at the top for a fortnight – this was the first record to enter at the top and drop in week two.
My memory, like Tom’s, is that it was a final attempt to rival Bo Rhap (I’d guess the “keep on trying” part alludes to that). Yes, they’d tried before – with the follow up for starters – but these memories get fogged by time. I wasn’t aware of Kashmir at the time and this sounded to me like a turgid attempt at the epic, and woefully out of step with 1991 (you don’t need me to point out the up-side of that pretty extraordinary year).
Listening to Innuendo now, I certainly don’t hate it. It has a certain power on the verses, restrained by flabby reverb; the “be free” middle section has a Lloyd Webber-ish air which is more Tom’s cuppa tea than me.
Album tracks as singles is something I don’t have any problem with, if by “album track” we mean a song that doesn’t go v/c/v/c/m8/cc. It feels like there is crucial missing section in Innuendo, ie a hook, the payoff that the opening bluster demands. It needs to be longer.
Re 13: Save Me?
Dave Lee Travis was appalling? Well there you go – the staple of my mornings in the 70s/early 80s, one of the better Radio 1 DJs who brought us the demise of Lennon, and a damn sight better in the morning slot than the ghastly Tony Blackburn. And much less of a prat than some of those who came into the slot after him, I may say. I’m looking at you, Mr Evans, and that fat git whose name I can’t recall who is also a Chris I think.
Would this be about the time DLT was crapped on for being too uncool?
#32 Like you Rosie I have a lot of affection for the old R1 DJs and still have a visceral dislike of Bannister (similar to Thatcher). However I don’t think DLT was a good advert for them. Even by the early 80s he seemed out of his time,only interested in self-promotion and totally unfunny which was why he got shifted to the weekends where the musical content was bland and thoughtless and seemed totally subservient to rubbish like the snooker quiz.
Incidentally I’ve heard Chris Moyles described as the new DLT more than once.
#31 I’m a bit confused WL – wasn’t the follow up to Bo Rap “You’re My Best Friend” ? That’s about as far removed from the epic sound as they could get.
#31. This was not quite the first to enter at the top and drop in week two. That was “Let’s Party” by Jive Bunny. But the point is not lost – Innuendo set a new record for fewest weeks in the top 10 for a no.1, equalled other similar ‘achievements’ and contributed to some other, related, chart feats.
It is interesting to see it proposed as “the beginning of the modern era” – and clearly, it does represent a new type of number one, where the pent up demand of a very large but increasingly cultish following is enough to take a record to no.1 in its first week – providing its the first access people have to the track in question. But for me, as stated elsewhere, the beginning of this era (which is probably best labelled ‘the 90s’) came in 1989 when for the first time a pre-existing track from an album entered at #1.
Looking back, Bring Your Daughter… and Innuendo are opposites in quite an unexpected way. One would think the Iron Maiden number one would be characterised by pent-up demand for new material, lacking crossover appeal, and week 2 sales would tail off badly. One might think Queen could achieve a couple of weeks at the top with the second single from an album, so long as the song caught the public’s imagination a bit. In reality, the roles were reversed.
I’d say Innuendo’s problem is that it simply tries too hard (or at least appears to try too hard) to ape the likes of Bo Rhap and Somebody To Love. It’s a sweaty blustery thing with none of the grace and lightness of touch you associate with their best singles. I know by this point they had spent the best part of 20 years straddling the rock/pop divide with some aplomb but this strides too far into dull ‘classic’ rock territory for me to ever really appreciate it.
This one’s new to me, and I’m surprised by how much I like it! I don’t love any of its various parts, but I *like* all of them. For better or worse, this could *be* an album track off one of Muse’s last two records. It doesn’t quite sound like a #1 record to me tho’ (whereas early Queen stuff like Killer Queen – well, it’s such a hook-fest, it’s almost unfathomable it didn’t make #1), but it’s a decent track, one that I’ll be glad to hear again, and that’s no embarrassment to Queen’s legacy (which is what I’d feared it would be):
6
MikeMCSG #33 – yes, the follow-up single to Bo Rap was indeed “You’re My Best Friend”, part of the soundtrack to that great summer; but Wichita’s clearly thinking of “Somebody To Love”, which was the lead-off single from the follow-up album almost exactly a year after Bo Rap, and for all its vocal overlays and effects swung like a good ‘un. Notably, it topped the “Sounds” single of the year poll in a year during which Sounds had become the house newspaper for punk! “Anarchy in the UK” meanwhile came 8th in the “best single” category and 1st in the “worst single” category. That’s not all that linked those particular two singles, as the bands’ promotional schedules became intertwined one memorable night in December ’76…
The “modern chart era” thing is interesting. It was still extremely rare for two consecutive number ones to be new entries, but by the end of 1991 there’d been six new-entry number ones in twelve months, unprecedented at the time. What to me felt like the start of the new era was the period when (IIRC) there were four of them in the space of eight weeks. This ironically came just after one of the most monumental chart stats of all, which is just nine entries away now!
I remember hearing this at the time and being fascinated by it – the different sections was interesting, I liked the portentousness of it. It seemed big and important, and I *wanted* to get it. But I found it annoyingly wispy, hard to get a hold of – there is barely a strong melody in the whole song, and I couldn’t have sung any of them to you prior to watching the YouTube clip. I’m not sure if I had ever heard ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ by the point I heard this – looking at the dates of this and Bo-Rhap’s upcoming resurgence, I suspect not! And I definitely hadn’t heard ‘Kashmir’. So this had no context whatsoever to me, another one I filed under ‘something for adults’.
The wash of arena-rock reverb totally kills this song for me now – it makes the song sound weak, flabby. Which perhaps works as a metaphor for how Freddie was feeling at the time, but for a song about power or defiance in the face of great odds, it doesn’t work at all. I’d be curious to hear a ‘Double Fantasy’- or ‘Ten’-style remix of this one to remove the leadenness, to see if it saves the song.
Re: earlier comments: (13), to me, the archetypal Queen is ‘Somebody To Love’ or ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’ (which is probably why they’re the Queen songs that get played on the jukebox in the movie ‘Shaun of the Dead’). They’re in the middle of the spectrum that is Queen, at least – halfway between silly and portentous, halfway between showtune and rock and roll, halfway between taut pop song and epic. (26) I’m fascinated to hear Robert Plant cover it, thanks for that link!
#37 yes, to mix animal metaphors that bunny has been the elephant in the room since we started 1991.
I think we are at the alltime low point for singles here at least as far as the mainstream went. They really were just loss leader adverts for other product whether the parent albums or films,jeans,cartoons, musicals etc and as alluded to above there wasn’t always a great deal of care in selecting them. You got a bit of a reaction against that in the Britpop era where bands like Oasis and Blur had grown up with classic singles bands such as Madness or The Jam.
With downloads of course you’re in a whole different ballgame; anyone who says this is the start of the “modern” era is betraying that they haven’t engaged with the charts for a while. Not that I have much.
#37 #39 I’m planning something a bit special for that entry, which I will announce quite soon.
#39 – “all time low” takes some defining, but I don’t think it can be here, when we still had TOTP and still had the Chart Show, so you’d invariably see the current number one a couple of times a week without having to look on specialist channels. In the post-TOTP and rapid-turnover era, I wonder how many people out of a hundred randomly selected on the street would be able to tell you what’s number one now? (OK, Adele at the moment is a bad example!)
You’re right about the download era succeeding what we’re calling the “modern” era here! – although number ones still go straight in more often than not, don’t they?
Listening to “Innuendo” now, it does all seem rather try-hard, like it’s endeavouring to be the band’s Big Statement when we all knew they’d made it with something altogether more personal 15 years earlier. Agree about the pretty sections being good in themselves without having the overall coherence or logic of Bo Rap (sorry, there we go again comparing it to the obvious, but then that’s what they laid themselves open to). And Tom is spot on about the disappointment when the plod returns at the end. One thing no-one’s remarked on is what sounds to me like a man-of-the-match performance from Roger Taylor, whose drums sound by turns epic, energetic and crisp in all the right places.
possibly apropos of #39 I note that of the singles in the Top 40 this week, 36 were in the Top 40 last week.
#41 of the past 15 number ones 11 went in at the top so that seems a fair enough assessment.
Hi all. Long-term lurker reporting for duty.
Part of the problem for Queen, I think, when they tried to do the arena-sized heavy rock thing was that their drummer was somewhat short of the task. No disrespect to Mr Taylor, as he certainly gave the band something as a high harmony singer, but if you think about what a Bonham or even a Grohl might have done with this, while competent, Taylor’s really quite leaden.
I think that someone involved in the enterprise knew it too, because the drums occupy a pretty small part of the mix for a song of this type (certainly if you compare it to a Zeppelin track), and they try to get the ‘heaviness’ from big guitars, but it doesn’t quite disguise the lack of basic power, attitude and swing in the drum track. A shame, because I think that the song certainly has its moments, and the band certainly weren’t lacking in other areas, but ultimately I think most of Queen’s best moments come when they stayed away from doing heavy rock/metal.
Wow, as I was typing, Erithian made his comment about the drums, which I guess I disagree with completely!
All grist to the mill, Wheedley – good to see you de-lurking and please stick around!
It’s interesting that the BoRap comparisons are coming out here. I’m not denying that’s probably what they were going for, but to me the track also has a similar doom-mongering mood to “Under Pressure” as well, obviously without having the swing of that single.
@40 Timing it for 1 April Tom? And 2 April, and 3 April, and 4 Apri…
# 41 I meant “all time low” in terms of sales and the general attitude of record companies towards the ’45.
Yes it’s strange that you have so many records still entering at 1 while the general pace of the charts is approaching 1950s torpor. In that sense we are in a genuinely new era. It seems like the online community has a tendency to coalesce around one “event” single at a time.
The ‘everything straight in at number one’ phenomenon may be coming to an end. There have been a couple of announcements this year that record companies are going to stop releasing singles for radio play before the release date in order to combat illegal downloads. This should have the effect of making stays at number one longer too, looking at the top tens for the last two months seems to indicate that this is on it’s way already.
On an unrelated note, is 1991 the year of Brian May? He seems to have had a hand in four number ones.
And he rounded off the year with the awful Ford-endorsing ‘Driven By You’.