Queen have had so many hits that their greatest-hits album could easily be released as an anthology. Brian May and Freddie Mercury, aided by the songwriting talents of Roger Taylor and John Deacon — and further helped, of course, by May’s standout Red Special guitar — achieved huge success together.
So picking one song as a cut above the rest was never going to be an easy task.
In their homeland, the band has broken into the Top 40 on 54 occasions, topped it six times, and produced 10 number-one records. In the U.S., they’ve made the Billboard 200 on 30 occasions, with nine top 10 hits and a singular track reaching number one.
Yet, when asked by the BBC’s One Show what his favorite Queen track is, May chose a song that’s unlikely to feature on any collection. He shuns the anthemic, chart-smashing, and wedding party mainstay “Bohemian Rhapsody” which he recently performed at Coachella with Benson Boone. And he’s looked past other titanic hits like “Another One Bites the Dust” and “Don’t Stop Me Now”.
In fact, he splits his answer into two parts: the song on the band’s setlist that always gets his blood pumping, and another song that has never made it to the stage.
As for the first song, May says (via the Express), “I still love playing them all, I have to be honest. But I would have to say ‘We Will Rock You.’ It always gives me a good feeling.”
As for his favorite song which remains forever off set lists, May revealed it during a Q&A session on the Queen YouTube channel. He says it’s his personal and emotional connection to the song that gives it special resonance.
“I’m going to pick a song that not everybody knows out there, which is called ‘The Miracle,’ which Freddie wrote that I always thought has a strange, unique magic to it,” May says.
“Especially because Freddie wrote it at a time when it was very hard for him to be optimistic,” May adds, referring to Mercury’s AIDS diagnosis, “and it’s just very beautiful. I’ll go for that.”
“The Miracle” was released on Queen’s 13th album of the same name, which would prove to be the penultimate Queen album released in Mercury’s lifetime. All four members are said to have contributed to a song that began with Mercury and Deacon.
The song, which references cultural icons as wide-ranging as Captain Cook, Cain and Abel and guitar hero Jimi Hendrix finds the singer praying for the ultimate miracle: peace on Earth
Mercury started showing symptoms of HIV/AIDS in the early ’80s, and as the decade closed out, his health was deteriorating. Yet his perspective was always positive-minded and outward-looking.
“The Miracle” is a song that represents the kind of character Mercury was, with doses of his flamboyancy pushing the progressive rock track along. It has never been played live as a mark of respect to their late frontman.
The song wasn’t a success, commercially. May even went as far to say that “everybody hated it for some reason,” but it’s a track he still holds dear.
“It’s very uncool to be idealistic in Britain, I suppose, at the moment,” he theorized in the wake of the song’s release in 1989. “They said, ‘How can they talk about peace’, and all that sort of stuff, then of course, China happened and everything [the Tiananmen Square protests and massacre]. It seems very relevant to us.”
May, however, has previously cited other Queen tracks as some of his favorites. On one occasion, he turned to a song completed four years after Mercury’s death and featured on the posthumous album, “Made in Heaven”.
“It’s a quintessential Queen track,” he said of the title track (via Far Out). “It’s one of the biggest we ever did. It was never a single, strange enough. ‘Made In Heaven’ is so enormous.”
Another contender previously cited by May is “I Want It All,” a song he felt captured the band’s desire to sing about the struggles of the everyman.
“The song was about reaching out and grasping what you want in life,” he had said, “A lot of Queen’s music was about normal people, with normal dreams and normal frustrations trying to grab the kernel of life. ‘I Want It All’ sums that up quite well.”
Mercury now lives on in a touching tribute featuring Brian May’s first-ever signature guitar, which comes after he became a Gibson artist. That announcement has led to speculation that a Gibson-made Red Special could be in the works, and he’s done little to downplay those wagging tongues.
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