“the Show Must Go On” by Queen

"The Show Must Go On" closes Innuendo, Queen's fourteenth studio album, from 1991, and it plays like a curtain call nobody would admit was one. The credit reads Queen, but Brian May wrote most of it, and the words are about Freddie Mercury refusing to stop working while his body failed him, back when his HIV/AIDS diagnosis was still only the stuff of media gossip. At the 1990 sessions May doubted Mercury could manage such a brutal vocal; Mercury downed a vodka and tore it to shreds.

May's electric guitar and keyboards give the power ballad its size, with John Deacon and Roger Taylor underneath and David Richards co-producing. Issued in Britain in October 1991 to push Greatest Hits II, it landed six weeks before Mercury died, and the next April Elton John sang it at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.