Made in Heaven | ||||
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Studio album by Queen | ||||
Released | 6 November 1995 | |||
Recorded | 1980, 1983, 1984, 1987, 1988, January – May 1991, 18 October 1993 – Early 1995 | |||
Studio | Mountain Studios, Allerton Hill, Cosford Mill, and Metropolis Studios | |||
Genre | Rock | |||
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Producer | Queen | |||
Queen chronology | ||||
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Singles from Made in Heaven | ||||
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Professional ratings | |
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Review scores | |
Source | Rating |
Allmusic | |
The Times | (favourable) |
Q Magazine | (favourable) |
Jerusalem Post | (favourable) |
The Guardian | (favourable) |
The Sunday Times | (favourable) |
Entertainment Weekly | (B+) |
Made in Heaven is the fifteenth and final studio album by the British rock band Queen, released on 6 November 1995 on Parlophone and Hollywood Records. Until the release of Queen Forever in 2014, it was the final album containing original material featuring the band's original line up.
After Freddie Mercury's death, guitarist Brian May, drummer Roger Taylor, and bass guitarist John Deacon worked with vocal and piano parts that Mercury recorded before his death, adding fresh instrumentation to the recordings.
Both stages of recording, before and after Mercury's death, were completed at the band's studio in Montreux, Switzerland. The album debuted at #1 in the UK where it went 4× platinum. The album became a worldwide success, especially in Europe, selling over 5 million copies there, and more than 7.5 million around the world.
The album was recorded in a much different way from Queen's other studio albums. In early 1991, having completed work on Innuendo, and some months before his death, Freddie Mercury recorded as many vocals as he could, with the instruction to the rest of the band (Brian May, Roger Taylor, and John Deacon) to complete the songs later. Put to tape during this time were primarily "A Winter's Tale", "Mother Love" and what would eventually become "You Don't Fool Me".
On the video Champions of the World, May described these sessions with Mercury as such:
By the time we were recording these other tracks after Innuendo, we had had the discussions and we knew that we were totally on borrowed time because Freddie had been told that he would not make it to that point. I think our plan was to go in there whenever Freddie felt well enough, just to make as much use of him as much as possible, we basically lived in the studio for a while and when he would call and say, 'I can come in for a few hours', our plan was to just make as much use of him as we could, you know he told us, 'Get me to sing anything, write me anything and I will sing it and I will leave you as much as I possibly can.'