THE MIRACLE

Here's the most stable band's album from the 80's. It doesn't contain a (prog) masterpiece as Innuendo does but it's a great album,with great songwriting, maturity and...beauty. Yes, that's what QUEEN was all about.

"A natural pair"; "Party" and "Khashoggi's Ship" are two killing rock tunes. Great opening, threat jump from one song to another, great musical performance and vocals. And clever, complex details that could be discovered later, because they're full of clever little details. "Party" is actually utilising programmed drum machine rather than drum kit but it still sounds great, it's hard to believe.

After that, we have "The Miracle", self-titled song which is pure pop...pop that is full of tempo changes, reaching the highest level of complexity: complexity that would not be noticed as one by a listener...only after repeated (and repeated) listening. Well, it is a bubblegum pop alright. But that bubblegum is very...cubistic. Or whatever.

Next track, again back to the rock roots in a sweetest possible way: a brilliant rocker "I Want It All" that will hook you instantly. With all the mood changes and solos and stuff.

After the rocker, QUEEN decided to present to the audience more trendy material, so we have "The Invisible Man" - a synth bass driven (so typical for the era) pop tune with great guitar licks, and that's about it.

The side B opens with...what?...gospel?...well, "Breakthru", a great pop-rock tune opens with gospel-like multi vocal harmony and piano and very soon enters into another synth-bas driven pop tune (where a melody, drums, some noises, even the chorus resembles a train). Originally, the band intended two separate tracks: a pure pop track ("Breakthru") and a entire gospel track, but for some reason, those tracks were never finished nor published on disk. Pity.

"Rain Must Fall" and "My Baby Does Me" are two below-par tracks, well, basically fillers, but not the worst possible ones in band's career.

"Scandal" is another good tune with great, moaning Brian's guitar, a few synth blips just to let us not forget the era when the album was recorded, and great vocals.

"Was It All Worth It" is a great finale for a great album: doubtedly the only prog rock song on the album, and a great one at that: the only thing that could overshadow it as a finale for a career of a great band, it could be only "Innuendo". This is a gorgeous track, very metal at the moments, with nice keyboard parts and a great pseudo-classical section. Yes it was worth it.

The bonus tracks are not outstanding in any sense: they're not better than rest of the album, they're not worse neither. They will just verify overall rating.

"Hang On In There" is a typical (high quality) pop tune form the era, "Chinese Torture" is a guitar-layered instrumental (prog,eh) and "Scandal" and "The Invisible Man" two 12" version, the last one being very psychedelic with that spooky noodling intro.

In conclusion, this is one of the greatest pop-rock albums of the 80's. Progressive elements are few, and they're scattered over the record. A listener will need quite a few listening to get into all the tricky arrangements and melodies.