It’s been over thirty years since his passing, but Freddie Mercury is still one of the greatest rock legends of all time. And just when we thought we’ve already heard every Freddie song recorded with Queen, another one comes along. A new track has just appeared from within the vaults. According to a report from Deadline, his Queen bandmates will soon release it in a remastered version. The song will release sometime this September.
The song goes by the title “Face It Alone.” Queen originally recorded it for their 13th studio album, The Miracle, in 1989. This was a mere two years prior to Freddie’s untimely passing due to complications from AIDS. Despite his worsening medical condition at the time, you’d never know listening to any Queen song from that era. Freddie’s voice was always operatic and gorgeous.
“Face It Alone” didn’t make the final cut for The Miracle. But Freddie’s Queen compatriots Brian May and Roger Taylor recently discovered the demo versions. In an interview, they said they’d pretty much forgotten about the song entirely. May said in an interview, “It was kind of hiding in plain sight. 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.”
The album from which “Face It Alone” originally came from was the second to last album Freddie recorded before he died in 1991. It wasn’t that well-received upon release, but time has been far kinder to it. Although Queen has had other frontmen since Freddie’s passing, none have ever touched what Freddie did. Here’s hoping that this is another reminder to the world of just how amazingly talented he truly was.