Queen - Made In Heaven

Made In Heaven is the fifteenth and final studio album by British rock band Queen, originally released in November 1995 via Parlophone Records.

Freddie Mercury‘s death wasn’t the end of Queen‘s classic era. Instead, that finale came with Made in Heaven, an album that arrived on 6 November 1995, with the last of a flurry of recordings the ailing singer made before succumbing to AIDS in 1991.

Mercury had incessantly worked in the months after the release of 1991’s Innuendo to make sure there was enough material for Queen to continue without him. He moved from Munich to Montreux, where Queen owned Mountain Studios, so that he could work through his last days.

In 1995, the surviving members got around to releasing the final recordings done with Mercury in the form of Made In Heaven, which topped the charts in Western Europe

Musically, Made In Heaven harked back to Queen's 1970s heyday with its strong melodies and hard rock guitar, topped by Mercury's bravura singing and some of the massed choir effects familiar from "Bohemian Rhapsody". Even if you weren’t aware that these songs were sung in the shadow of death, that subject would be obvious. The lyrics were imbued with life-and-death issues, from the titles - "Let Me Live", "My Life Has Been Saved", and "Too Much Love Will Kill You" - to lines like "It's hopeless -- so hopeless to even try" ("It's A Beautiful Day"), "Waiting for possibilities/Don't see too many around" ("Made In Heaven"), and "I long for peace before I die" ("Mother Love").

The odd thing about this was that Mercury's over-the-top singing had always contained a hint of camp humour, and it continued here, even when the sentiments clearly were as heartfelt as they were theatrically overstated. Maybe Mercury was determined to go out the same way he had come in, as a diva. If so, he succeeded.

The complete album is available on vinyl for the very first time.

This double album 2LP record set is on 180 gram heavyweight black vinyl housed in a gatefold sleeve with printed inner sleeves and half speed mastered audio, pressed in Europe via Virgin EMI Records.