Freddie Mercury
Mr. Bad Guy

THE REVIEW

Given the recent clamor surrounding “Queen II,” I feel compelled to delve into the Queen issue with this review. In 1985, the Queen take a year off. Despite how it may appear from the outside, financial matters are often at the heart of squabbles within the Queen's household. Mercury, the dreamiest of the four, feels it, and he is frustrated. He takes advantage of the break to realize a dream, music as he likes it in a solo project. He goes to New York to record “Mr. Bad Guy” for Columbia. The album contains his entire self, Mercury the showman removes for the first time the mask, makeup, and tight costumes. An effective metaphor is the cover, which shows Freddie with sunglasses on the front, while the back portrays the singer’s uncovered and melancholic gaze.

The record is a self-portrait, an open-heart autobiography, extremely sad, full of loneliness, failed loves, and false friendships. The contrasts are heart-wrenching between a nonetheless cheerful and contagious musicality with lyrics permeated with bitterness. Such is the case, for example, with “Living On My Own,” which contrary to what Briel’s spots (and similar) want us to believe, is from '85. The entire Mercury-thought is then in “There Must Be More To Life Than This,” almost as if he had had a premonition of his untimely end. The original songs are beautiful (in the sense that those in “Made in Heaven” are songs from this album horribly re-recorded by Queen in '94) “I Was Born To Love You” and “Made in Heaven.”

Freddie’s voice is at its peak and always in the foreground, the old-fashioned and somewhat outdated music is clean and dominated by the piano. If you are disgusted by the posthumous Remix/GreatestHits, by Christmas compilations, by “We Will Rock You” sung by the likes of Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears (as will happen for Euro 2004), this record is for you. It revitalizes the dignity of a great artist, who has always put our enjoyment and his music first, sacrificing himself. Genius and fragility in one. I could go on talking about Freddie and this record, which is worth much more than the entire Queen discography from '76 onwards, but I am already far beyond the limits. For insights and comparisons, write to me. Listen to it!

“…taking in all this misery, but giving it all my soul…” (Made in Heaven)