(Credits: Far Out / Spotify)
Sat 15 November 2025 15:00, UK
In the world of music, it is utterly impossible to separate personal experience from opinion.
That’s true of all art forms. If you walk into a gallery sad, it will likely be a more sombre painting that will move you than if you’d walk in on a cheery day. The same goes for films, albums, and books. There is no dividing line between our emotional selves and the critic in us all – even if you’re someone as powerful as Brian May.
There’s a prevailing theory in the world of artistic criticism that says that art can never be truly separated from its context. That applies to the audience as they bring their own feelings of the day into the mix, unable to view something from outside, whatever fog might be covering their sight in that moment. But it’s also, and especially, true of artists.
It exists on many levels. It means that a musician will never truly escape the impact their local scene has on them, or even the impact of the music they were raised listening to. But it also means that their view of their own work will never be separated from the days it was recorded, the memories made and the context of whatever they might have been going through at the time.
As a perfect example, look towards Queen and Brian May and Roger Taylor’s claim that their final album, Made In Heaven, is “possibly the best Queen album we ever made”.
Not to speak over the opinions of the two legends, but in an objective view, it just isn’t. The 1995 album is great, but it can’t hold a candle to the innovation and cultural importance of something like A Night At The Opera or A Day At The Races.
However, what Made In Heaven is is deeply moving, and deeply personally important to the two bandmates, given that it was the final time they would ever be releasing music with Freddie Mercury’s voice on it.
It was a grief project, really, a way to process the loss of Mercury and celebrate his life. After his death in 1991, Made In Heaven was the record they created using the vocal and piano parts he’d recorded before. Returning to their studio in Montreux, where those final takes had been captured, it was a project that brought the friends together in a tender time.
“It has so much beauty in it. It was a long, long process, painstakingly put together. A real labour of love,” May said in 2013, as it’s really that experience that makes him love this album best out of all of them. It’s the same for Taylor, who was the one leading the project and who convinced the others to make it, as he said, “I drove it first. Brian was especially hesitant. When we heard Freddie’s voice from the control room, everything changed.”
The album was a way to honour their friend’s wishes as Taylor said, “Freddie wanted us to produce as much music as possible while living. He didn’t want us to quit.”
So really, the band’s suggestion that the album is underrated doesn’t have much to do with the music. Instead, it comes down to the fact that it is impossible to adequately rate an album this deeply personally important to them and so tethered to their tender grief.
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