The 1989 song Brian May wished Queen didn’t release: “A bit too obscure”
For the majority of their career, Queen used to defy the convention of pop songwriting by managing to write mini-epics that felt as though they had more in common with progressive rock than the rest of their chart competition.
Given their singular approach, it’s no wonder that they stood out to so many people, given that this was a bold move that paid off in their pursuit of brilliance. Queen established themselves as a truly unique and theatrical outfit that could turn the simplest of ideas into masterpieces through ingenious songwriting flourishes.
A large amount of this was down to having four exceptional songwriters within their ranks, with arguably Freddie Mercury being the most vital ingredient in this regard. For the most part, they were largely left to their own devices during their golden period, writing songs individually and bringing them to the table, but this all came about from them having written as a unit in their earliest days, and it did not necessarily work in their favour.
However, towards the end of the 1980s, when Mercury had begun to suffer the debilitating effects of his HIV diagnosis more severely, the approach began to shift back to how things were in order to take some of the pressure off their ailing frontman.
Returning to something that they’d previously tinkered with but hadn’t been able to make work doesn’t necessarily mean that this was going to be a regression, but it was a shift in approach that dramatically altered how they sounded, given how each of the members had their own distinct voice when it came to songwriting. By this point, they were more mature songwriters with a much better understanding of their strengths, so it could have worked on the second attempt.
When Brian May was asked about the band’s recently released album, The Miracle, in a 1989 interview with Classic Rock, it was questioned whether there were any downsides to writing collectively, and whether songs like ‘Was It All Worth It’ and ‘Hang On In There’ suffered from having multiple personalities due to all four members having contributed to them, which May confirmed was difficult to navigate.
“Yeah, they are schizoid,” he responded, noting how they weren’t too far removed from their old practices. “In that sense, it’s much more like the old days. On the first few albums, the songs would grow into strange shapes. I don’t think any of the new songs escaped ‘the treatment’.”
“We thought ‘Hang On In There’ had gotten a bit too obscure,” he added, referring to a song that was not included on all versions of the album, and released as a B-side to ‘I Want It All’. “Devotees of the band would get off on it, but it’s not regular album material.”
Given this information, it’s not a surprise that ‘Hang On In There’ didn’t have a standard feature on The Miracle, and if May was feeling frustrated by the direction things seemed to be moving in, this was probably the worst example of a song where things were being unnecessarily overcomplicated and entirely understandable why they’d not want it to be used as an advertisement for where they were as a band.
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