I want to speak up for Innuendo. Excellect late period album.
OK, now I'm going to blab.
Innuendo is the first new Queen album I ever noticed. I was 15 or so.
At this point, I suddenly became aware of this band. I'm not entirely sure how or why, in that they weren't onb heavy MTV rotation or anything, but all of a sudden this band existed, and I realized all these songs I'd always known (We Will Rock You, We Are the Champions, Bicycle Race, Another One Bites the Dust, etc) weren't Beatles songs, which my childhood self assumed they might be.
I was a confused young lad.
So it turns out Queen exists. And it turns out Queen is the best thing going on, suddenly making a near-mockery of the pop-metal that dominated my life at the time. And then somehow--Metal Edge? Circus? How?--I am hearing these things that are
insane for a 15-year-old, small-town, midwestern (USA) boy. I'm hearing this singer is gay. Or more specifically, I'm hearing he's a
fag. And then I'm hearing he's dead. And I'm hearing about AIDS.
What. The. f***.
And all of a sudden my brain collapses and blows up all at once, because the world in which I live is nonsensical. Freddie Mercury matters more than this sh*t. And what he did romantically, physically, sexually, was so unbelievably irrelevant to me, other than that whatever it was, it helped inspire him to make the best music I could imagine at that time. I'm a kid who was raised on musicals and the Beatles, who is hugely receptive to this ... and frankly, suddenly, I'm just different. Whatever love or lust inspired this guy, it's fine because of the result. It's not different than the love or lust that inspires everything else I listen to.
So almost overnight, it just clicks with me and my attitude is different. And then there's Wayne's World and the reissues and everything else and f*** you all (I'm thinking), this is the best. And, said 15-year-old me, if you don't get it, f*** you. Freddie was the best. And right when I knew him, he died.