Brian May’s favourite Queen album: “It’s got so much depth to it”
It’s often said that only the true greats are confronted with the almost unanswerable question of their crowning achievement. Queen guitarist Brian May is no exception; he’s frequently asked to pinpoint his finest artistic effort. Unsurprisingly, providing a definitive answer has proven to be a Herculean feat for him.
Adding another layer of complexity to the challenge is that Queen embarked on a creative arc that saw them take on many different sonic guises as they moved with the zeitgeist and, more importantly, continued to push themselves in the creative arena, never resting on their laurels. This attitude can be found in the stories of almost all undisputed musical champions. They regularly exhibited their worth and vitality amid the changing times and showed real doggedness in the face of markedly shifting listener tastes. They were not for turning, to use a period-appropriate reference.
Like most of their peers who dared to continue on their path when it seemed to many like their time was up, Queen’s fearlessness in blurring lines and ignoring outside opinions produced both moments of undeniable verve and others that the band and everybody else unlucky enough to hear them, would rather forget.
I’d place 1980’s ‘Flash’s Theme’ firmly in the latter camp, but that will undoubtedly be the cause of much frustration for ardent devotees of the formerly Freddie Mercury-led group. Incredibly of its time and undeniably tacky, for the band to release such an opus amid the punk-affected landscape demonstrates both their daring and the fact that they are an outfit that inhabits their own space.
Apart from moments such as those, the group’s popular highlights include 1974’s Sheer Heart Attack, when the group blended hard rock and glam more frenetically than they would later, 1975’s A Night at the Opera, which produced their definitive hit in ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ and later albums from the decade such as A Day at the Races and News of the World. Of course, releasing such a mass of essential records during the decade suggests that Queen were at their peak within those ten years, but with multiple hits to come, the group were only just getting started. ‘Under Pressure’ and ‘Radio Ga Ga’ were still years away.
When speaking to The Guardian in 2023, Brian May was asked by a fan whether he agrees that Sheer Heart Attack is Queen’s best effort. He said it was undoubtedly a “breakthrough” regarding the artistic strides instituted and spreading the word of his band, but he questioned whether it is really the greatest.
May said his favourite is the group’s 15th and final studio album, Made in Heaven, released in 1995. Their only release without Mercury – who died in 1991 – it saw May, bassist John Deacon and drummer Roger Taylor working with vocal and piano recordings that their late friend had captured before his death and adding fresh instrumentation. A tremendous hit, it debuted at number one in the UK and eventually went platinum. For May, the album represents something much more profound than purely the music.
He explained: “My favourite, strangely enough, is probably the last one, Made in Heaven, which we completed after Freddie had gone. It’s got so much depth to it, so much spiritual content and emotion, because we were working with Freddie’s voice when Freddie was no longer here.”
It took May and the band years after Mercury’s death to muster up the courage to re-enter their studio in Montreux and complete the record, as they were all grieving. However, deep down, they knew the embryonic material they had already captured needed to be carried to the finish line out of respect for their late friend. May added: “It was a labour of love, but I find that I can listen to it with a great feeling of peace now.”