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Jason Maloney reviews
V o l u m e # 1 5 Week Commencing: 22nd May 1989 Online Date: 26th May 2005
The penultimate Queen studio album to be recorded during Freddie Mercury’s lifetime saw the band quite literally putting on a united front; The Miracle‘s striking album cover featured a unique four-headed creation with the faces of messrs Mercury, May, Taylor and Deacon merging into each other.
This show of unity extended to the songwriting credits and share of subsequent royalties. For many years these aspects had created tension within the group but, unknown to those outside of the Queen inner sanctum, singer Mercury had been diagnosed with AIDS and it was decided that hatchets should be buried and financial as well as artistic equality introduced so that the band could all pull together and focus on making the best Queen record possible.
Arguably their most satisfying album of the 80s, The Miracle proved a success upon its release by debuting at #1 and spawing consecutive UK Top 10 hits with the bombastic I Want It All and the invigorating pop of Breakthru. Three further singles were released, all making the Top 30. Whereas previous album A Kind Of Magic had been a rather cobbled-together mixture of soundtrack work and some obvious filler, The Miracle had a definite unity.
The opening medley of Party and Khashoggi’s Ship was a blast, as was celebratory closer Was It All Worth It?, and inbetween there were the five hits plus a couple of admittedly lightweight outings (Rain Must Fall and My Baby Does Me). “We were fab, we were brill!”, the final song exclaimed, and really there was no answer to that.
Queen went straight back into the studio at the end of 1989 with an ever-deteriorating Mercury, emerging just over 12 months later with the towering swansong Innuendo.
Somewhat surprisingly, the EMI stable had chosen to pit two of its very biggest names against one another on the week of May 22nd. David Bowie, stung by the critical mauling of 1987’s actually-quite-good Never Let Me Down album and disillusioned by the actually-bad-as-they-say Glass Spider world tour that followed its release, made a drastic left-turn with his new project. Teaming up with the rhythm section of Hunt and Tony Sales, whom he had worked with in the past, and adding the guitar pyrotechnics of Reeves Gabrels, Bowie created Tin Machine.
Now, the very mention of its name induces mirth, but in May 1989 this venture into abrasive, alternative rock was heralded as a return to form; ie. it was his best since Scary Monsters, before he went soft and courted the mainstream. In truth, Bowie’s post-Let’s Dance problems took a full 20 years to really overcome, 2002’s Heathen finally living up to the “no, really, this is the genuine article” hyperbole which accompanied every fresh release during the late-80s and throughout the 90s, but on Tin Machine he was trying his damndest to shake off a self-confessed malaise.
Beneath the Pixies/Sonic Youth-inspired racket were several fine songs; I Can’t Read was revisited a decade later for Bowie’s contribution to the soundtrack of Ang Lee’s The Ice Storm while Under The God, Prisoner Of Love and Heaven’s In Here all had a sense of purpose to them. Media coverage and fan loyalty secured a #3 debut for the album, but sales quickly fell away and by the end of the year the whole enterprise was regarded by some as a bad joke; the sight of David Bowie and his new sidekicks hammering out rowdy covers of old T.Rex numbers in small dives clearly failing to impress in certain quarters.
Undeterred, Bowie continued with Tin Machine for a second studio album (the actually-much-better Tin Machine II) in 1991 and a live set, Oy Ve Baby, a year later before calling time on the project.
(DVDfever Dom adds: “I loved the ‘Never Let Me Down’ CD and play it regularly as background music whenever I play on the Xbox”)
Turning Stones
Some ten years on from her only Top 40 hit, the classic Stay With Me Till Dawn, Judie Tzuke was releasing quality albums to a steadily dwindling audience.
Turning Stones was her first album in 4 years, and her debut for the Polydor label. Its opening track We’ll Go Dreaming was later covered by trance king BT, just scraping into the Top 40 in 2000, while Let Me Be The Pearl ought to have returned Tzuke to the singles charts.
Despite charting at a then career-low of #57, the album was an artistic success and has become quite collectable since its deletion in the 90s.
(Note: The cover art links to Judie Tzuke’s hits collection as the above CD is out of print)
During 1984 and 1985, Nik Kershaw spent 97 weeks on the UK album chart with his first two albums Human Racing and The Riddle. By 1989, he couldn’t even make the Top 75 with his fourth long-player The Works. Along with his contemporary at the time Howard Jones, he had suffered more than most from the shift in pop fashions at the end of the 80s.
The album’s introductory single One Step Ahead had hit #55 at the start of January, but the single which immediately preceded The Works, the lilting Elisabeth’s Eyes, sounded the alarm bells by drawing a complete chart blank. All of which was a pity, since The Works was another solid, well-crafted and pleasingly-performed collection of songs.
Kershaw wouldn’t record again under his own name for a decade (1999’s 15 Minutes ending his exile), instead taking a backseat role as the writer of hits for Chesney Hawkes and Cliff Richard among others.
(Note: The cover art links to Nik Kershaw’s new hits collection as the above CD is out of print)
Page Content copyright © Jason Maloney, 2005.
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.