A good magician never shows you the trick up his sleeve or the key hidden there under his tongue, just out of eyesight. He doesn't want to show us his weakness, the thing that prevents him from actually being able to commit the feat of wonder. That is the mark of a true performer, and is what separates the pros from the amateurs (with the exception, of course, of Penn and Teller, who have made their performance showing us the keys).
Freddy Mercury was no exception, and Made In Heaven, the album Mercury and his fellow bandmates in Queen were working on at the time of his death in 1991, proves it. Whereas John Lennon was (and oh, man...am I gonna catch shit for this one) a man who seeming had a lot of life ahead of him, yet left us with "Free As A Bird," Mercury - who knew he was going to die - performs with reckless abandon. Songs like "I Was Born To Love You" and "Made In Heaven" tap into all the things we liked about Queen in the first place. Mercury was our friend, our lover, our confidant. In his writing and his vocals, you could feel the importance of every line and every note of the song.
The album opens with "It's A Beautiful Day" where Mercury pretty much sets the tone for his life and the album, singing "It's a beautiful day/I feel good/I feel right." That sentiment runs through the majority of the songs on this album, and that's probably what makes Made In Heaven such a great album.
You could be weighed down with the fact that here was the incredibly gifted performer who was taken away from us so soon, but you're not. Mercury wouldn't have wanted it that way.
