Innuendo (song)

"Innuendo"
Artwork for UK release
Single by Queen
from the album Innuendo
B-side
Released14 January 1991 (1991-01-14)[2]
RecordedEarly 1989 – mid 1990
GenreProgressive rock[3]
Length
  • 6:30 (album version)
  • 6:46 (12-inch explosive version)
  • 3:28 (promo version)
Label
Songwriter(s)Queen (Freddie Mercury and Roger Taylor)
Producer(s)
Queen singles chronology
"The Miracle"
(1989) 		"Innuendo"
(1991) 		"I'm Going Slightly Mad"
(1991)
Music video
"Innuendo" on YouTube

"Innuendo" is a song by the British rock band Queen. Written by Freddie Mercury and Roger Taylor but credited to Queen, it is the opening track on the album of the same name (1991), and was released as the first single from the album. The single debuted at number one on the UK Singles Chart in January 1991, the band's first number-one hit since "Under Pressure" nearly a decade before, and additionally reached the top ten in ten other countries. It is included on the band's second compilation album Greatest Hits II.[4]

At six-and-a-half minutes, it is one of Queen's epic songs. The song has been described as "reminiscent" of "Bohemian Rhapsody" because it was "harking back to their progressive rock roots".[3] Its verses are in the Phrygian Dominant and features a flamenco guitar section performed by Yes guitarist Steve Howe and Brian May, also in that mode,[5][6] an operatic interlude and sections of hard rock that recall early Queen, in addition to the lyric inspired in part by Mercury's illness; although media stories about his health were being denied strenuously, he was by now seriously ill with AIDS, from which he would die in November 1991, 10 months after the song was released.

The song was accompanied by a music video featuring animated representations of the band on a cinema screen akin to Nineteen Eighty-Four, eerie plasticine figure stop-motion and harrowing imagery. It has been described as one of the band's darkest and most moving works.[7] AllMusic described the song as a "superb epic" which deals with "mankind's inability to live harmoniously".[8]

  1. ^ "Queen UK Singles Discography 1984-1991". www.ultimatequeen.co.uk.
  2. ^ "New Releases: Singles" (PDF). Music Week. 12 January 1991. p. vi. Retrieved 8 July 2021.
  3. ^ a b "Queen - Innuendo". rokpool.com. Archived from the original on 13 January 2016. Retrieved 18 August 2015. "The opening self-titled track has the band doing their tourist bit reminiscent of 'Bohemian Rhapsody' harking back to their progressive rock roots."
  4. ^ "Queen Greatest Hits II". Allmusic. Retrieved 1 May 2021.
  5. ^ Cannarozzo, Alessandro (26 December 2014). "1991, Innuendo". QueenItalia. Archived from the original on 25 October 2021. Retrieved 25 October 2021.
  6. ^ [1] Archived 9 February 2009 at the Wayback Machine
  7. ^ Queen's Greatest Videos. Episode 1/1. 1999. Channel 4.
  8. ^ Prato, Greg. Innuendo review. AllMusic. Retrieved 12 April 2011.