The Miracle (album)
| The Miracle | ||||
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| Studio album by Queen | ||||
| Released | 22 May 1989 | |||
| Recorded | January 1988 – January 1989 at Olympic Studios and Townhouse Studios, London, England, and Mountain Studios, Montreux, Switzerland | |||
| Genre | Rock | |||
| Length | 41:22 | |||
| Label |
Parlophone (UK) Capitol (1989) / Hollywood (1991) (US) |
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| Producer | Queen, David Richards | |||
| Queen chronology | ||||
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| Singles from The Miracle | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |    |
| Chicago Tribune | |
| Encyclopedia of Popular Music | |
| Q Magazine | |
| Rolling Stone | |
| The Rolling Stone Album Guide | |
The Miracle is the thirteenth studio album by the British rock band Queen, released on 22 May 1989. The album was recorded as the band recovered from Brian May's marital problems and Freddie Mercury's AIDS diagnosis in 1987 (which was, though known to the band, not publicised at the time). Recording started in January 1988 and lasted for an entire year.
The album was originally going to be called The Invisible Men, but three weeks before the release, according to Roger Taylor, they decided to change the name to The Miracle. It is also the last album to feature a band photo with all four original members on the front cover.
The album reached #1 in the UK, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, and #24 on the US Billboard 200 chart. The Miracle is estimated to have sold 5 million copies, indicating that despite lower sales in the United States, the band had excellent numbers in the world, even without touring. Allmusic would name The Miracle as Queen's best album of the 1980s, along with The Game.
It would prove to be the band's penultimate album to be recorded with Freddie Mercury, as he died in November 1991, less than a year after the next album, Innuendo, was released.
All tracks credited to Queen. Listed below are the respective writers.
"Party" began as a jam session between Freddie Mercury, Brian May and John Deacon. Mercury was at the piano and he started off the "we had a good night" section. From then on the three of them worked together and completed it. This is the only track which can truly be seen as a 'Queen' track in the sense that all the rest were written by sole members – but nevertheless credited to Queen. May sings lead on a small portion of the song near the beginning.
"Khashoggi's Ship" was started by Mercury with all four of them contributing to the lyrics and music. The song is about famous billionaire Adnan Khashoggi and a ship (the Nabila, now Kingdom 5KR) that he owned at the time and was one of the largest private yachts in the world. On the album, this track segues from "Party", to which it has a very similar lyrical theme. The song served as the reference to the name of the Khashoggi character in the We Will Rock You musical.
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