A Kind of Magic (Queen album)

***A Kind of Magic*** is the twelfth studio album by the British rock band Queen, released on June 3, 1986 by EMI Records in the United Kingdom and by Capitol Records in the United States. It was their first studio album to be recorded digitally, and is based on the soundtrack to the film Highlander, the first in a series directed by Russell Mulcahy. A Kind of Magic was Queen's first album to be released since they had been acclaimed for their performance at the 1985 Live Aid concert. It was an immediate hit in the UK, going straight to number one and selling 100,000 copies in its first week. It remained in the UK charts for 63 weeks, selling about six million copies worldwide (600,000 in the UK alone). The album spawned four hit singles: the album's title track "A Kind of Magic", "One Vision", "Friends Will Be Friends", and "Who Wants to Live Forever", which features an orchestra conducted by Michael Kamen, while the last track, "Princes of the Universe", is the theme song to Highlander.

Although Queen would release another two albums with Freddie Mercury (excluding posthumous releases), A Kind of Magic would turn out to be the band's last album promoted with a concert tour, because of Mercury's diagnosis with HIV the following year, which subsequently caused his death in 1991. For the first time in their career, the band allowed themselves to be filmed while they were in the recording studio. The video for "One Vision" shows them in various stages of writing and recording the song.

The album enjoys the status of an unofficial soundtrack for the 1986 film Highlander (for which no official soundtrack album was released). The title, "A Kind of Magic", derived from one of the lines Connor MacLeod (Christopher Lambert) says to describe his immortality. Six out of nine songs on the album appeared in the film, although in different versions. The three songs that did not appear in Highlander are "Pain Is So Close to Pleasure", "Friends Will Be Friends" and "One Vision" (which was featured a year earlier in the film Iron Eagle). Conversely, a recording of "Theme from New York, New York" made specifically for a scene in Highlander does not appear on A Kind of Magic, and in fact has never been released in album form to date.

Listen to A Kind of Magic on Deezer.

#### Personnel

* Freddie Mercury – lead vocals (all tracks), backing vocals (1-6, 9), keyboards (2, 4, 5, 9), sampler (1, 4, 5)
* Brian May – electric guitar (all but 3), backing vocals (5, 6, 9), synthesizer (1, 6), sampler (1), lead vocals (6)
* Roger Taylor – drums (all but 3), backing vocals (2, 5, 6, 9), drum machine (2, 6, 8), synthesizer (2)
* John Deacon – bass (all but 6), electric guitar (4, 5, 8), synthesizer (3, 4), sampler (3, 4), drum machine (3, 4)

Additional personnel

* Spike Edney – keyboards (5, 8)
* Joan Armatrading – incidental vocals (8)
* Steve Gregory – alto saxophone (3)
* Lynton Naiff – arranged and conducted string section (3)
* National Philharmonic Orchestra – arranged by Michael Kamen and May and conducted by Kamen (6)

#### Singles

After Queen's contribution to Live Aid, Freddie Mercury was enthusiastic about the band and rang them up to go to the studio and write a song together, the finished product being ***"One Vision"***. All four band members were credited as songwriters, however Roger Taylor stated in an interview with Australian TV that originally it had been his song, with serious lyrics about men like Martin Luther King, but joked that "that rotter Freddie" had changed all his lyrics with additions like "one shrimp, one prawn, one clam, one chicken", and even name-checking John Deacon. Brian May played the opening synth section using a Yamaha DX-7. The song does not appear in Highlander, but was used in the 1986 movie Iron Eagle. Released on November 4, 1985, it peaked at No 7 on the UK Singles Chart.

***"A Kind of Magic"*** was written by Taylor. He has admitted writing down some lyrics, which proved to be the basis for both "One Vision" and "A Kind of Magic", something made obvious by the demo of the song appearing for the first time on the 2011 Universal Bonus EP, which mixes some lyrics. Later on, unbeknown to Taylor who was off to the US for a few days, Mercury took it over, "polished" the lyrics, added the bassline, some connectors and re-arranged the structure. Regardless, the new, more pop-oriented version was still credited to Taylor. It was this version that was featured on the album, released as a single (March 17, 1986 in the UK; June 4, 1986 in the US) and included their auxiliary live musician, Spike Edney, playing some keyboards. The heavier, rockier alternate version, also making its official debut on the 2011 Universal bonus EP, played during the end credits of Highlander.

***"Friends Will Be Friends"*** was written by Mercury and Deacon, with lyrics written by Mercury. It is one of the last of Mercury's piano ballads, and in some ways is a musical similitude with older Queen material, such as "Play the Game" and "We Are the Champions". It is another song not featured in Highlander. It was noted as being a modern update of the 1970s Queen rock anthems "We Are the Champions" and "We Will Rock You" and was released on June 9, 1986, reaching No. 14, in the UK.

***"Who Wants to Live Forever"*** was composed by May and sung in the album version as a duet between himself and Mercury. Synths parts are played on a Yamaha DX-7 by May, and the orchestra was arranged and conducted by Michael Kamen. Deacon did not participate, and Taylor played some drum-machine parts and contributed backing vocals. Percussion was taken over by the orchestra as well as bass (double bass in this case), in spite of Taylor and Deacon miming those parts respectively in the video. It serves as somewhat of a "love theme" of Highlander, as it adds to the sub-plot of the movie (in the film, Mercury sings the first verse as well, unlike the album version, which has May singing first).