Description

Check the exclusive video showing this 12″ for sale

Check the exclusive video showing this 12″ for sale

Queen   I Want It All
Label: Parlophone   ED416
Format: Vinyl, 12″
Country: Australasia
Released: 1989
Genre: Rock
Style: Pop Rock
Tracklist:
A I Want It All (Album Version) 4:39
B1 I Want It All (Single Version) 3:45
B2 Hang On In There 3:59

Arranged By, Producer David Richards, Queen
Design Richard Gray
Engineer David Richards
Photography By Simon Fowler
Written-By Queen

Track A taken from the album “The Miracle”.

“I Want It All” is a song by English rock band Queen, featured on their 1989 thirteenth studio album The Miracle. Written by guitarist and backing vocalist Brian May (but credited to Queen) and produced by David Richards, the song was released as the lead single from the album on 2 May 1989. “I Want It All” reached number three on both the UK Singles Chart and the American Billboard Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks chart, number 50 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart[3] and number one in other European territories, including Spain, where Los 40 Principales regularly played the song during the month of July 1989.
The song was first played live on 20 April 1992, three years after its release, during The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert, performed by the three remaining members of Queen, with Roger Daltrey singing lead vocals and Tony Iommi playing rhythm guitar. Mercury himself never performed the song live, as he died in November 1991 from AIDS at the age of 45, and his final performance with Queen was at the end of the Magic Tour, in 1986. The song is sung mainly by Mercury, with May singing on the choruses, and the middle eight.

Background:
The song, according to John Deacon, was one of only a few which was already written before the band entered the studio in the beginning of 1988 for what would become “The Miracle” album. The title stems from a catchphrase of Anita Dobson, later Brian Mays second wife: “I want it all and I want it now!”. “I Want It All” is notably heavy and features themes relating to rebellion and social upheaval. Songwriter May, however, claims that it is about having ambitions and fighting for ones own goals; because of this, the song became an anti-apartheid song in South Africa and has also been used as a gay rights protest theme and a rallying anthem for African-American youth.

Style and reception:
In reviewing The Miracle for Allmusic, Greg Prato suggested that the song, like title track “The Miracle”, “reflect[s] on […] the state of the world in the late ’80s,” summarising the song stylistically as “heavy rock.”Melville-based newspaper Newsday mentioned “I Want It All” as one of “The best” of the album, describing it as “coloured by Mays rocking guitar rolls and Mercury’s rough-boys vocals.” In reviewing the album, The Dallas Morning News described “I Want It All” in some depth, explaining how it “starts off with a Bowiesque guitar part, picks up a heavy cargo of steel, quickly lays down the hard line implied by the title, then takes flight along Mr. Mays greased fretboard.” The song marks the first and only use of a double kick bass drum in a Queen song.

Music video:
The music video features the band performing in a studio that used halogen lighting. It was directed by David Mallet. Brian May and Roger Taylor recall that Freddie Mercury’s health was already quite bad when the videos shooting took place, and it was remarkable that it didn’t show up in the video, with Freddie Mercury performing with all the energy he had.