05-20-1989 – The Miracle – The Times

Queen, whose latest offering, The Miracle, additionally addresses the question of how much bad taste is it possible to cram on to one album. Even the trick cover photograph, which depicts the members of the group as one four-headed, five-eyed person, is a monstrous piece of tack.

Musically, the synth-pop dabbling of “Radio Ga Ga” and its ilk has been discarded in favour of the more familiar, grim amalgam of bubblegum metal power chords, mock symphonics and squiggly guitar solos.

In its favour, it is difficult to imagine a collection more blithely out of step with the fashionably earnest Weltanschauung of contemporary rock. The miracles of which Freddie Mercury sings in the title track are everything from the longed-for Utopia of “peace on earth” to the more mundane pleasures of “Sunday mornings with a cup of tea”. Such is the extent of the social commentary.

Otherwise there is a thematic thread of exuberant and unabashed hedonism, which runs from the opening “Party” through “Khashoggi’s Ship” and “I Want It All”, and climaxes in a bombastic, hectoring piece of blarney called “Was It All Worth It”, which is a grotesque, stadium rock equivalent of “My Way.”