Brian May’s Favorite Queen Song Marked a Pivotal Moment in the Band’s History

Queen's mercurial guitarist and constant friend to badgers, Brian May helped shape the band's sound with his distinctive playing. He had a hand in writing many of the group's hits, and, when you're looking at 26 top 10 records in the UK alone, that's a legacy worth celebrating.

When it comes to picking their favorite song that they recorded, artists can often surprise you, and this was the case when May was asked this very question, via a Q&A on the band's official YouTube channel. Instead of opting for crowd-pleasing hits such as “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “Killer Queen,” or “Radio Ga Ga,” the guitarist chose an often-overlooked entry in Queen's discography: the title track from their 1989 album The Miracle.

Why the Lesser-Known Song Is So Significant

This record was made during a difficult time in the band's history. It was the group's first since lead singer Freddie Mercury's 1987 HIV diagnosis. May himself was getting over the divorce of his first wife, Christine Mullen. Yet this was also a period of renewed optimism, as the guitarist told Guitar World, looking back in 2022:

“I think we felt like we’d found a new way of reading one another, because we had been through a little bit of an extreme estrangement there, with people going off and doing their own thing. We came back, and we decided to share the publishing of all the songs.”

Previously, the group had split official songwriting credits, meaning that only the stated writer would collect certain revenue. “I'm surprised it hadn’t happened earlier,” continued May, “but on the other hand, I’m quite surprised it happened at all because you have to give up quite a lot to make that decision…you have to give up your baby and share it with your partners, but it was a wonderful decision because it freed us up and inspired us to work much more openly with each other.”

For The Miracle, album, Queen also began working in the same studio together again, rather than overdubbing their respective contributions at different times and locales. The record's sweet, soaring title track was one of the most complicated songs the group had composed since the 1970s.

Lyrically, it speaks of the miracle of mother nature, declaiming: “The one thing we're all waitin' for, is peace on earth, an end to war.”

Explaining his choice during the Q&A, May stated that the song: "…has a strange, unique magic to it. Especially because Freddie wrote it at a time when it was very hard for him to be optimistic, and it’s just very beautiful. I’ll go for that."