The Works (Queen album) 19 November 1984, and promotional copies were indeed pressed ("QUEEN 5") and sent out (b/w "Keep Passing the Open Windows"), but the band opted for a Christmas single ("Thank God It's Christmas"). The fifth track on "The Works", "Machines (Or 'Back to Humans')", came about as an idea by Taylor, and May collaborated with him and finished it. Producer Reinhold Mack programmed the synth-"demolition" using a Fairlight CMI II Sampler, and the song is sung as a duet between a double-tracked Mercury (singing in harmony with himself), and a robotic Taylor (using a Roland VP330 Vocoder). The instrumental remix of
Harriet, the Woman Called Moses singers for a production of "Porgy and Bess". She said that she chose Tubman as her subject because "Harriet is every woman who dared to defy injustice and tyranny—she is Joan of Arc, she is Susan B. Anthony, she is Anne Frank, she is Mother Teresa." As with her previous operas "Mary, Queen of Scots" (1977), "A Christmas Carol" (1979), and "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" (1981), Musgrave also wrote the libretto. The opera was a joint commission from Virginia Opera and The Royal Opera in London and was written and composed in 1984 while Musgrave was on a