In a Radio 1 interview in 1989, each of them claimed the other had constructed the bassline. Both of them had the idea of a simpler track in order to ease off the album. "My Baby Does Me" is another collaboration of Mercury and Deacon. May has since commented that the song is very close to his heart. Mercury's lead vocals were also a first take. May played keyboards and did the guitar solo as a first take. "Scandal" was written by May about the British press, in the wake of media-fuelled controversy about his recent divorce, his relationship with Anita Dobson, and Mercury's rare public appearances due to his battle with AIDS. The song served as the reference to the name of the Khashoggi character in the We Will Rock You musical. On the album, this track segues from "Party", to which it has a very similar lyrical theme. The song is about famous billionaire Adnan Khashoggi and a ship (the Nabila, now Kingdom 5KR) that he owned at the time and was one of the largest private yachts in the world. "Khashoggi's Ship" was started by Mercury with all four band members contributing to the lyrics and music. May sings lead on a small portion of the song near the beginning. From then on the three of them worked together and completed it. Mercury was at the piano and he started off the "we had a good night" section. "Party" began as a jam session between Freddie Mercury, Brian May and John Deacon. It would prove to be the band's penultimate album to be recorded with Freddie Mercury, as he died on 24 November 1991, nine months after their next album, Innuendo, was released.
AllMusic would name The Miracle as Queen's best album of the 1980s, along with The Game. The album reached number one in the UK, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, and number 24 on the US Billboard 200 chart. It was also the last Queen album with a photo of the band on the front cover. The album was originally going to be called The Invisible Men, but three weeks before the release, according to Roger Taylor, they decided to change the name to The Miracle. Recording started in January 1988 and lasted for an entire year. The album was recorded as the band recovered from Brian May's marital problems and Freddie Mercury's HIV diagnosis in 1987 (which was known to the band, though not publicised at the time). The Miracle is the thirteenth studio album by the British rock band Queen, released on by Parlophone Records and Capitol Records in both the United Kingdom and the USA, respectively, where it was the band's first and final studio album to be released on those respective labels.