The Miracle was the fifth and last single from Queen's 1989 album The Miracle. It was composed by the entire band, although Freddie Mercury was reportedly the main driving force behind it. It was released as a single in late November 1989, some six months after the album. It was the last of the singles from that album to be released, and the first time that a 5th single had been released from any of Queen's EMI albums.
In the video, Four young Queen impersonators do a remarkably accurate riff on the band before, in the final third, being joined by the real thing. Slightly bizarre in those opening moments, it's actually rather cute by the end. The young Freddie is Ross McCall, who would grow up to star in Band Of Brothers TV series...
It's by no means my favourite Queen song, but it's certainly one of my favourite videos....
Second in series of my five favourite Queen promos...
Radio GaGa (1984)
Written by Roger Taylor and directed by David Mallet, the song reached number 2 in the UK charts, number 16 in the US charts and number 1 in 19 other countries. The video features scenes from Fritz Lang's 1927 science fiction movie Metropolis.Freddie Mercury's solo song "Love Kills" was used in Giorgio Moroder's restored version of the film, and in exchange Queen were granted the rights to use footage from it in their "Radio Ga Ga" video. However, Queen had to buy performance rights to the film from the communist East German government, which was the copyright holder at the time.
The video spawned the now famous "hand claps" in the chorus, which of course became an integral part of the band's live show and audience interaction. Members of the Queen fan club were enlisted as extras for these sequences in the video
This is the first in a series of five of my favourite Queen promos...
I want to Break Free (1984)
Written by bass player John Deacon and directed by David Mallet. Probably the most notorious - and enjoyable Queen video of them all, this has the quartet in full drag, the most notable exponents being Roger Taylor's mildly disturbing schoolgirl and Freddie's busily Hoovering housewife, complete with obscenely brilliant bristling moustache. The first part of the video parodies the long running UK soap opera Coronation Street, while the second part is a more theatrical affair, Freddie performing a strange dance sequence with members of the Royal Ballet. The cross-dressing parody was well-received in the UK, where the song reached number 3 in the charts, but less so in the USA where it was banned by MTV and only reached number 45 on the Billboard charts. Sometimes British humour doesn't transfer well across the Atalantic...
