Nov 6, 20242 min read

Queen Quiz — One Vision

Cover Artwork for Queen's single "One Vision"

“One Vision” is a Queen single recorded in 1985 and was included on their twelfth studio album “A Kind Of Magic”. The song was the result of group collaboration within the recording studio after Queen's epic appearance at Live Aid. Queen spent a week coming up with various ideas in the studio, with four or five songs-worth of material to choose from. Although “One Vision” was the idea of Roger Taylor, it was credited to Queen.

Taylor was inspired by the life and exploits of Martin Luther King Junior, as portrayed within his “I Have A Dream” speech, with the song recounting a man battling and overcoming the odds.

Whilst working on the song within the recording studio, as the band were trying to come up with the proper wording of the song, Freddie Mercury changed all his lyrics with additions like “one shrimp, one prawn, one clam, one chicken”, and even name-checked John Deacon. This resulted with the song ending with “Fried Chicken”.

The song was included in all Queen's live concert performances of “The Magic Tour”. It was the opening song, which Queen used because the song's introduction made a perfect concert introduction.

The music video for “One Vision” was recorded in September 1985 and mainly showed the band recording the song at the Musicland Studios in Munich.

The video also featured a “morphing” effect of the band's famous pose in 1974's “Queen II” album cover and 1975's “Bohemian Rhapsody” video to a 1985 version of the same pose.