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If I am not mistaken, this is the first Queen song since the first record to have a song with a co-writer credit outside of the band. That first musician was Tim Staffel, the original bassist for Smile, the band that became Queen. This time it’s Freddie’s “Barcelona” collaborator, Mike Continue Reading

Roger likes cars. He likes danger. He likes a steady, driving, pulsating beat.I think we all got that, um…15 years before. Still and all, it’s a lot better than the arpeggiating crap he used to give us. In this case, it’s like “Breakthru” Pt. II. It’s a dumb song, but Continue Reading

Opening with a preset sound on a synthesizer…is that genius or laziness? The Korg that Freddie was using had an opening preset that he used in that way. Fine. Whatever. If your muse is now someone else’s programming startup sound of a machine…whatever. How’s the song? Pretty pedestrian ballad version Continue Reading

Another Brian May rocker, but this time it sounds like a mid-tempo R&B jam that is fused with a metal approach but deep inside it’s really just a middle of the road track.The lyrics are pretty mediocre, the playing just as much so. I used to think it was a Continue Reading

It is a pet peeve of mine when a song starts with the word, “And”. As though there was something that was said before but there wasn’t so it just sounds…off. This is a latter day May rocker. In fact, he was supposed to record it for his Back to Continue Reading

Taking a cue from Oscar Wilde and referencing, with great humor and snark, his own debilitating illness, Freddie came up with a haunting and smart single.The pumping beat, the haunted house echo, “Mad” is a singularly fantastic track. It’s all Freddie, all over the place. Samples of asides pepper the Continue Reading

So, Freddie didn’t die. Not yet, anyway. And the swan song that was the aptly named album The Miracle was only the prelude to their final act. “Innuendo” is the strangest and boldest opening to a Queen album since, perhaps, Sheer Heart Attack. A 6 minute magnum opus with outsized Continue Reading

Version:1.0 StartHTML:0000000167 EndHTML:0000007299 StartFragment:0000000457 EndFragment:0000007283 Historically speaking, this should have been the coda. This was Freddie’s final statement. The man was dying, basically.  A somber opening, a vocal wail, a calliopal carousel melody that gives way to a giant metal guitar version of the riff, overlaid and overlaid and then… Continue Reading

Deep in the bowels of this record is a redux of “Cool Cat”. A lazy, obnoxious, bass driven leftover sounding piece of uselessness called “My Baby Does Me”. “My Baby does. My Baby does me. Baby does. My baby does me good.” A lot of that. I would say, hey, Continue Reading

Brian May had been under the scrutiny of the tabloid press in the mid 80s for his relationship with actress Anita Dobson. Freddie was dying of AIDS but no one knew for sure.Drawing upon these real life events Brian wrote “Scandal”. Kudos for writing what you know, I guess. Like Continue Reading