Queen to drop unreleased song featuring Freddie Mercury’s vocals later this year
The seminal rock group announced that "Face it Alone" will be released in September
Aux News Queen
Decades after his death, iconic mustachioed rocker Freddie Mercury is still guaranteed to blow your mind, anytime. And a new Queen song featuring the late frontman’s vocals, titled “Face it Alone,” is reportedly slated for a September release.
Queen’s Brian May and Roger Taylor confirmed to BBC that the new track comes from the recording sessions for Queen’s 13th album The Miracle, which was released back in 1989.
“It was kind of hiding in plain sight,” May said of the rediscovered track. “We looked at it many times and thought, ‘Oh no, we can’t really rescue that.’ But in fact, we went in there again and our wonderful engineering team went, ‘Okay, we can do this and this.’ It’s like kind of stitching bits together… But it’s beautiful. It’s touching.”
Taylor said the band had “kind of forgotten about” the “wonderful” tune, and said encountering Mercury’s words felt like a “real discovery.” He called the recording a “little gem from Freddie.”
“I think it’s going to be out in September,” Taylor teased.
Mercury, who died in 1991 at the age of 45 of bronchopneumonia resulting from AIDS, has reached reverential status as both a charismatic frontman and queer icon in the years since his death. In 2018, his life story was chronicled in Bohemian Rhapsody, a biopic in which Rami Malek portrayed him.
Queen hasn’t released new original music since its 1995 album Made in Heaven, but both Taylor and May seemed confident in the striking quality of the lost recording that will soon see the light of day. After recording The Miracle, Mercury lived a more secluded lifestyle as his health began to deteriorate, making the album’s studio sessions some of the last the energetic visionary would partake in with the band.
“It’s a very passionate piece,” Taylor said.
10 Comments
So it sounds like it’s going to be a “You Don’t Fool Me” type situation where they paste a bunch of different unrelated lyrics and bits together to make a song? “You Don’t Fool Me” wasn’t great, so I have reservations.
Torn between “Oh, cool!” and “Plz no.”
same.
So it’s Queen’s “Free as a Bird” track.Every time Queen is mentioned I always think of this vocal only audio of “Under Pressure” with Bowie:ttps://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMQb9LCNGxsIf you never heard it before, it’s worth a listen. Two legends at the height of their powers trying to out do each other. Their both gone now, but goddamn they left some amazing work behind. We were lucky to have them as long as we did.
As with Free as a Bird we will probably find that scraping the bottom of the barrel is rarely going to dredge up any classics.
Was going to say, Beatles’ “Free As a Bird” is the only thing i can think of that came close to pulling this off (god bless Jeff Lynne). This is going to be a self-serving disaster (check out Sacha Baron Cohen’s comments about Queen’s attitude when he was slated to play Freddy in the biopic)
While Free as a Bird was tolerably mediocre, it was the spur for the Anthology project which was pretty great in all its formats.
While Free as a Bird was tolerably mediocre, it was the spur for the Anthology project which was pretty great in all its formats.yeah, I don’t hate Free as a Bird. It’s not great, it’s fine I guess. It’s just the first thing that sprang to mind when I read this article.
It would be great if this new Queen track turned out to be at least good – especially since Queen seems to be more popular now than they have been since the 80’s. I’m always blown away when I see a young kid wearing a Queen shirt now.
So like Yoko Ono, Queen are into the “let’s find every scrap of tape with Freddie on it and put it out . . . for the fans” phase?
Coming this Christmas: Freddie Mercury’s answering machine!
I generally don’t plan to drop things. Just sort of happens. But I guess you can do it this way too. Regardless, I think they should consider being more careful with this song if it’s so important to them.