June 2, 1986 - A Kind Of Magic and Who Wants To Live Forever

Over two months since my last release and two years since their last album "The Works", Queen released their twelfth studio album "A Kind Of Magic" on June 2, 1986. Around the same time Queen also wrote music for the film "Highlander" and there are several songs that overlap between this album and the film, including the only song I have off this album, titled "Who Wants To Live Forever". In this pretty cool movie there are people who cannot die unless they are decapitated but it also shows the downsides of never dying as loved ones will pass you by. John Deacon and Roger Taylor barely feature in this song at all as the bass and drum parts are played by an orchestra conducted by the legendary Michael Kamen. Freddie Mercury and Brian May both sing on this song and it's May who plays the synthesizer. He plays some slow but epic synths as Mercury sings a slow and soft verse in his wonderful voice. The chorus has both Mercury and May singing as they nicely team up to emphatically sing the name of the song. The orchestra joins in for the next verse and Kamen conducts some great emotional and moving music that fits the sad mood of the song perfectly. Mercury lets out a nice long yell at the end of the next chorus and he sounds great as he trails off singing "our love must die". May plays some light guitar that sounds nice and we hear some loud and epic drum hits as May nicely brings us to a brief new verse. This also leads into the chorus and Mercury is really letting loose now as he sings loudly and triumphantly. After this loudest chorus Merciry trails off again this time asking "who is forever anyway?" as the orchestra takes over with some dark and gloomy stuff that I think sounds really good. The last bit of the song is instrumental and sounds pretty cool.and epic. It seems like they are about to end the song on a high note, but finish off with one final dark note from the orchestra. This is certainly not your typical Queen song but I think they did a great job with it. 

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