Retro Spins: Queen - Innuendo



I need to call a time out after last week's Retro Spin. Give myself a moment to regroup before moving on in full swing. As such, please indulge me as I take a free throw with this week's album.

I've said it a hundred times over here at The Toy Box, I love Queen! They're my all time favorite band...Which is why I wish Brian May and Roger Taylor would really stop trying to kill their legacy. One of Freddie Mercury's last wishes was that nobody made him boring in death. I fear with an oversaturation of greatest hits releases, a "new" front man that Queen purists won't pay a dime to see and a plethora of potential live albums which the surviving members refuse to release, they're doing just that.

1991 was both a tragic and amazing year for Queen and their fans. The world lost Freddie Mercury to AIDS, but also got the amazing album, Innuendo. Driven by some of the best tracks since the band's work in the 70's, this final album to have Freddie's fingerprints on it was a masterpiece. Nay, IS a masterpiece.

It features deep and emotional songs which we can hear Freddie saying goodbye to his many fans across the world, while also dishing out peppy and straight up rock and roll songs which say, "I still want to entertain you, darlings."

The band knew this would be their final outing with Freddie, and their collaboration shows. Each member brings their all to the table. Brian May provides a mixture of guitar work from classical, Latin and hard rock, while Roger Taylor and John Deacon work in unison to lay down a mixture of subtle when necessary bass lines, and hard, power packed ones when they're called for.

Each one of its twelve tracks is crucial to the next, so much in a way that I can't personally imagine not hearing it back to back in its entirety each time I play it...And I've played it a lot. Not as much as my brother played Alanis Morissette, but a lot nonetheless. Actually, that may not be true. I may have broken my brother's record. Just not in consecutive days like he did.

Though Queen did go on to release one posthumous album on behalf of Freddie in 1995, to me, Innuendo feels more so like the perfect finale to the band's studio catalog. It takes twenty years of Queen and delivers a wonderfully satisfying conclusion to an era of rock and roll that will probably never be repeated or replicated.

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