10 Greatest Final Albums In Rock

Towards the early ‘90s, Freddie Mercury had a feeling that he was reaching the end of the line. Living with an AIDS diagnosis, his doctors had told him that he wouldn’t survive past the late ‘80s, only to defy expectations and still press on however he could. The end was coming on slowly though, and Freddie was determined to work at any cost to keep his spirits up.

While Made in Heaven was never intended to be a full on album, most of the project was more about giving Freddie something to do during the final months of his life, with the band working in a studio close to his house and Freddie turning up when he was having one of his better days. If you listen to this record without the backstory though, you would never have even thought he was sick, tearing through some of his most powerful vocal passages on songs like a Winter’s Tale and delving into his subtle register on songs like You Don’t Fool Me.

While the rest of the band do their best to fill out the album with their own songs, the real showstopper here is Mother Love, one of Freddie’s standout vocal performances and one of the band’s biggest emotional gut punches once Brian May takes over singing, with Freddie passing away before the track actually was fully finished. Made in Heaven is definitely scattered in more than a few places, but the album stands more as a celebration of Freddie’s music than a record of his death.