Why was Made in Heaven sadly overlooked in US as opposed to other countries

Hmm.

You all like Queen because *you* like it, as an individual, right? Not because of success in a certain country, or because other people like it.

So, what's the big deal? Just put on the headphones, forget about the charts and sales, and... bliss!

OgreBattleField1980 wrote:

So I guess Im horrible for becomming a Queen fan just for getting Classic Queen and The game when I was 11 years old , after seeing Waynes World?
I think thats obsurd really , Classic Queen , after many years of listening to the tracks there. Then once i was able to get a job and work, buying Queens entire collection of albums. I realized just how much a pile of crap the Classic Queen compilation was... you realize how much crap it is just by listening to Under Pressure and Hammer To Fall and lets not forget The Miracle. Should they have made made in heaven?
In my opinion , yes , for the new fans that got to like Queen from catching on whether it be from Waynes World or from the god forsaken Tribute Concert. Yes this was a good release. Now on the other hand , I still think along with the synths and lack of guitars. The Aids scare and homophobia had alot to do with Queens decline in the United States as well. I think that though this wasnt said by anyone here in America at all. You can kinda read between the lines. Honestly, I cant even find the Mr Bad Guy Album in stores , even when i was 15 and 16 trying to buy it , it was no where to be found. Im from Louisiana, wanna know what albums I saw in almost every record store I went to back in 1995 and 1996, for one Hot Space was a rare find here , I found Jazz , News of the World , A night at the Opera , Queen II, A day at the races , The Game , The Miracle and Innuendo and I saw this more than I saw any other album by Queen. None the less , i turn on the television and put it on VH1 during the broadcast of VH1 legends they showed an INFOMERCIAL advertising the Made in Heaven album with a 1800 number. The commercial itself was a load of crap and did nothing to show the best qualitys of this band or that particular album..I mean come on they coulda played A winters Tale or Mother Love but the commercial played Heaven For Everyone , but it was only a repeat of the intro .. shoving the words "This could be heaven" down our throats... that commercial alone was enough for me not to by this album till 2000 , in the mean time i enjoyed the other 24 albums including Innuendo which to me would have signified a rebirth for this band had Freddie not died from such a horrible illness. I will go all the way down to my bloody grave thinking and knowing that Queen didnt get the respect they deserved here in America , even when they got inducted into the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame here in Cleveland Ohio , I taped that on VH1 , Roger himself posted a comment i dont remember an exact quote , but he mentioned that they never won a Grammy here in the US.. that brings my attention to one other thing ... if any of the songs from the Miracle or Innuendo albums are of any incling I believe that they should have won grammys for both I want it all and The Show Must Go On and Headlong. But that was then and we cant go back and change that now .. but to me , they woulda had my vote. These were four very talented musicians and their own right , and reguardless of taste i think people should realize that. Instead of listening to the garbage which is rap. Ya know what else .. since im getting highly upset now... i think along with 2pac and Biggie smalls and ODB that rap has been ultra magnified and had it not been without those three deaths rap surely wouldnt have become part of the mainstream ... its already infecting country music .. Nelly .. and Tim McGraw? you cant be serious *snickers* .. thats almost as bad as what Eminem did impersonating Michael Jackson ... kinda makes ya wonder what us Queen fans would have said had Eminem impersonated Freddie Mercury instead of MJ ... sorry to bother you with this little rant .. but i couldnt help myself.


Yours Truely
Ronald Joseph Silvey

My man. I had gotten into Queen because of my older sister having three songs from the band on tape. As a result, I stole her friend's copy of Quee

I'm with ya all the way NOTWMEDDLE , ta hell with em Long live Queen the torch will always be carried by us! And thanks again to all of you who post on this forum , ive read this forum for a long time before ever becomming a member and i find the info that you people provide to be much more knowlegeable than the acctual websites.
The Websites to me dont provide enough of what we want to here. Im happy that you guys and gals do that for me. So cheers , and lets break out the champagne Freddie style!

made in heaven was overlooked in the u.s simply because the u.s never truly loved and understood Queen, so it was only natural.

mike hunt wrote:

made in heaven was overlooked in the u.s simply because the u.s never truly loved and understood Queen, so it was only natural.

Yet surprisingly MIH went Gold with over 500,000 copies sold in the US. Many Americans were fairweather fans to Queen and yet they have sold over 32 million copies of their albums in the US.

Personally, I love the album, but Queen's popularity was fading away by 1996, If Queen released the album around 1993 where Wayne's World was still in everybody's mind and Bohemian Rhap is still in the charts, Made in Heaven would have made it, and ofcourse there's that stigma of the "gay band"......I don't care what anyone says, I'll be blasting queen songs really loud in my car, and I get a kick everytime when I'm at a stop, the car next to me is blasting some rap music, and I'm in trance like state listening to high volume of "melancholy blues."

Ha , Dr May , I get the same feeling , just by playing Dragon Attack in my car watching the people in the car next to me looking at me like Im Crazy. Down here in Louisiana its way different too because rap has taken over a state which was widely dominated by bands like Lynard Skynard and R.E.O.Speedwagon and even Styx and Queen. Im a Taxi driver , do you know just by playing Queen in my car , I get more tips this way alot of my customers remember Queen as a great band , but this doesnt happen everyday. In the neighborhood I live in all you can hear comming down the street are these souped up cars with these sound systems blaring Eminem or Dr Dre. I feel like im the only guy on my block who knows who either Queen or Boston is.

I think BHM 0271 and Regor are spot on. As a big (American) Queen fan at the time of their popular peak here, the band continued to pull one "headscratcher" after the other. Flash was their followup to the Game? For a band that had boasted 'no synthesizers' for years, they release an album that is almost all synths. Hot Space? I wanted my money back. Radio GaGa? *cringe* I Want to Break Free? *cringe again* A Kind of Magic? A great rock band had turned into a singles band, and we didn't buy it. By the time Freddie died, the band had fell into the nostalgia act category here. Made in Heaven was more singles, none of them particularly special, and in my opinion it got the attention it deserved. An album for the diehards, but better forgotten in the grand scheme of things.

Also, realize that Queen didn't tour the states after 81, and this also contributed to their losing momentum. Their live shows were legendary here, but as the old saying goes, out of sight out of mind.

As far as I'm concerned, when Queen deserved attention, they got it from America.

Regor wrote:

As you said, BHM 0271, MIH fails compared to "Innuendo". I would never ever doubt the guys' caring and loving intentions, and I thank them for that tribute and for giving us the possibility to hear the last ever recorded tracks with Freddies wonderful and magical voice. But it's not a group effort as the albums before - and how could it be with one vital part missing ? I am sure they did their best to recreate the creative group-feeling in the studio. But it's a tribute, not a genuine album. Again, only in my opinion, it's patchwork.

Personally I like the MIH album - I agree it's not a complete group effort with Freddie not there to finish the album off, but the purpose of recording after Innuendo was finished was for the rest of the band to work on another album after his death. The rest of the band knew this and did the best they could with the material that had been started with Freddie there. Brian sings the last few lines of Mother Love because Freddie didn't get the chance to finish it. Let Me Live was a Queen demo which Brian & Roger helped finish off and make into a Queen song. All of what had been recorded with Freddie had to be finished off after his death, that was the whole point of the album. I wouldn't call it a "tribute", as Freddie had done his bit when still alive.

that's the biggest crock of shit i'v ever heard, we never gave songs like who wants to live forever a chance.

I feel made in was sadly overlooked cos it was a very mellow album, and a bit serious by queen standards. queen never took themselves so seroiusly, but the real reason is they simply lost their popularity in the states, especially with grunge in it's prime.

Some of my fellow Americans here have probably forgotten this, but in 1995 VH-1 had a Queen Week that heavily promoted Made In Heaven (I taped it). It was great...Champions of the World, Live in Budapest and videos...nice to OD on Queen for a week, and great teaser for the album, because after watching COTW (with its snippets of songs from the album in the last 30 minutes of the program), I wanted to hear the rest SO badly! Then, a nice friend of mine gave me an advance vinyl copy on white vinyl two weeks before it was released and I WAS in heaven!
The first listening of the album had shivers going up and down my spine, especially when Mother Love played, with those nice concert sounds added. Side Two started out joyously and ended on a triumphant note (the "yeah" in the middle of the last song made me weep) and it was as if Freddie was saying things were okay, he was happy where he was (sounds weird but that was my impression). When the CD came out with the nice "hidden track", I had fun listening to that as well. It tends to lull you into a half-sleep, almost trancelike, really peaceful feeling....then you hear Freddie's voice clearly..."Are we running?"...and you JUMP out of your skin!! OOH, nice touch Brian!! But I dearly love it, and play it for patients in my clinic. They like it too and more than a few have ended up buying the CD just for that track -- but I'm sure they've listened to the rest of it as well.

BHM 0271 wrote:

Excellent post Regor (and not just because we agree!) There was something disjointed about the album and I think it's the reasons you mentioned.

As for the US sales Mr. Scully, it was simply a matter of nobody caring. Queen fans mention Freddie's moustache, look and the Break Free video as the reasons they lost America. It wasn't. Queen weren't a keyboard/synth band. The following singles were the big releases from The Game to The Works. Play the Game, Crazy, Dust, Body Language, Calling all girls, Radio Ga Ga. Was Brian in the band at this time? American's loved heavy Queen, guitar and piano based. Brian sounded totally recognizeable, as did their harmonies and Freddie piano was unique also. Once two of those elements disappeared, it was curtains for Queen. And as much as I like Hammer to Fall, by the time it was released it was too late.

Thanks for your comments - just had to geht this "MIH"-thing out of my system somehow ;-).
It seems a lot of people became Queen-Fans after buying this album, and I'm fine with that, it's nice to see more people and even teenagers get into a band like Queen in these musically very diverse times.
But as mentioned, this album was and is difficult for me. Nice to see I am not alone... ;-)

It's always the case. To make 'it' in America. The make or break sector.

I think that Queen is ignored in US maybe because the American Queen publicists perform relly bad. I mean u don't read any review from Queen material in The Rolling Stones or u don't see any single from new Queen materials being released. U don't see Queen on MTV. U don't see any Queen ad in the papers.

U know other bands like U2 or others that r so overrated do this shit and they get more than what they deserve but Queen and specificly Brian , Jim and Roger don't do shit.

I think Queen has to get more active publicists in US.

this is what i think, i don't know if u guys agree with me.