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Rating: Rather than a musical parable for Queen, it is fair to speak of an oscillating and controversial artistic journey. Starting high with the first four albums, they continued with works not always up to the mark, even risking hitting rock bottom during the turbulent transition from the seventies to the eighties. A two-decade-long career, between lights and shadows, fortunately closed with a masterful encore: Innuendo.
Strengthened by a newfound unity and affection for their leader, the final Queen crafted an epic and overwhelming album. And from the hat of a work, which in terms of its ideas would have allowed a less stellar group to set up an entire career, comes out as the second single, a pop jewel, as inspired as it is refined. "I’m Going Slightly Mad" was not a commercial success, except for reaching first place in the charts, incredibly, in Hong Kong, but it is proof of the surviving genius, almost unchanged, that was a peculiar feature of the English band in the seventies. The composition evidently originates from Mercury, as the song climbs on absolutely complex and non-guitaristic chords. However, all the band members converge to enrich the sounds, as in many tracks of the originating album, with a masterful performance by the usual May in the central solo, where the guitar sound is distorted to the point of sounding like a moan, and an amazing Mercury, interpreting the singing in unusually low tones.
The lyrics, probably written by four hands, present us with the most intense and poetic Queen ever heard. The words flow smoothly thanks to remarkable metric and rhyme work, always perfect and never mundane. The content refers to the state of deep bewilderment of the band, and Mercury in particular, due to his illness: a state of prostration that almost borders on madness. The Queen, who had been an avant-garde of the videoclip, adorn the song with a wonderful video, inheriting all the merits of the song and projecting the band members into a surreal, black-and-white setting, dealing with attitudes and situations typical of childhood. In the Italian edition of the single, there are the powerful hard rock track The Hitman, in strong contrast to the title track, and a new track by Brian May, Lost Opportunity, which neither adds nor detracts from the mastery expressed in the previous two pieces.
To conclude with an anecdote: when Innuendo was released, in '91, I was fifteen, I bought the album, and played many of the tracks repeatedly, except for some, including this song, which I found a bit boring at the time. Now, a bit more mature, fifteen years later I find myself, among the immense quantity of music available, choosing precisely 'I’m Going Slightly Mad' to write my personal tribute in the form of a review to the English band. A dutiful tribute for Queen, who, without practically composing anything else, are still among the most collected and followed artists, and a point of reference, in many ways unrivaled, for hundreds of rock bands worldwide.
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