"The Show Must Go On" is a song by British rock band Queen, featured as the twelfth and final track on their 1991 album, Innuendo. It is credited to Queen, but written mainly by Brian May. The song chronicles the effort of frontman Freddie Mercury continuing to perform despite approaching the end of his life, although his diagnosis with HIV/AIDS had not yet been made public in spite of ongoing media speculation claiming that he was seriously ill. When the band recorded the song in 1990, Mercury's condition had deteriorated to the point that May had concerns as to whether he was physically capable of singing it. May recalls; "I said, 'Fred, I don't know if this is going to be possible to sing.' And he went, 'I'll fucking do it, darling'—vodka down—and went in and killed it, completely lacerated that vocal".

Innuendo is the fourteenth studio album by the British rock band Queen, released on 4 February 1991 by Parlophone in the United Kingdom and it is the band's first studio album to be released by Hollywood Records in the United States. Produced by David Richards and the band, it was the band's last album to be released in lead singer Freddie Mercury's lifetime, and their most recent one to be composed of entirely new material, save for The Cosmos Rocks by the Queen + Paul Rodgers collaboration. It reached the No. 1 spot on the UK album charts for two weeks, and also peaked at No. 1 in Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland, staying at No. 1 for three weeks, four weeks, six weeks, and eight weeks, respectively. It was the first Queen album to go Gold in the US upon its release since The Works in 1984.