Queen Plan to Issue Previously Unreleased Song Featuring Freddie Mercury Later This Year
Queen will add to the legacy of the late Freddie Mercury whenever they share one more Freddie-featuring track later this year. Roger Taylor and Brian May revealed the news while speaking with BBC Radio 2 ahead of their Queen Elizabeth's Platinum Jubilee concert performance over the weekend.
According to Taylor, the song in question, titled "Face It Alone," was recorded during their sessions for the 1989 album The Miracle. Mercury had sung on the song during sessions in 1988, but when the album was released it was not among those that had made the cut for the record.
“We did find a little gem from Freddie, that we’d kind of forgotten about,” the drummer stated. “It’s wonderful, actually. It was a real discovery. It’s from The Miracle sessions, and I think it’s going to be out in September.”
“It was kind of hiding in plain sight,” May added. “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, 'OK, we can do this and this.' It’s like kind of stitching bits together. But it’s beautiful, it’s touching.”
Taylor concluded, “It’s a very passionate piece.”
As Queen's popularity has only continued to grow following Mercury's death in 1991, any new addition to his works should be highly anticipated when it does eventually arrive.
Following Mercury's death, bassist John Deacon remained part of the group's activities until he retired in 1997. May and Taylor have continued to keep the band's name and music alive, first spending five years with Free and Bad Company singer Paul Rodgers fronting their live performances.
In 2011, following a hugely successful run on American Idol, Adam Lambert took over handling vocals for Queen and has remained with the group ever since. Up to this point, the band have stuck to touring with Lambert, though it was revealed last year that the band had tried to work up new music with the singer but had yet to find something that they wanted to move forward with musically.