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British rock band Queen have shared a previously unheard song from 1988, titled Face It Alone. The unreleased song was recorded 34 years ago, and features the late legendary Freddie Mercury on vocals. The track was recorded as part of The Miracle album material, however it never made it to the record.
The track debuted its release on BBC Radio 2 on 13th October, with the remaining members of Queen speaking to the BBC earlier this year about this period of recording, when Mercury’s health was failing. Drummer Roger Taylor explained:
“We did find a little gem from Freddie, that we’d kind of forgotten about. It’s wonderful, a real discovery. It’s a very passionate piece.”
While guitarist Brian May added:
“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, ‘OK, we can do this and this.’ It’s like kind of stitching bits together… but it’s beautiful, it’s touching.”
The track’s arrival as a single leads in an 18 November release of a new revisiting of the band’s 13th album, The Miracle, the band’s penultimate to be released in Freddie Mercury’s lifetime, which now becomes available in a lavish 8-disc Queen The Miracle Collector’s Edition box set format.
Among its contents, the expanded set includes The Miracle Sessions: an hour-plus disc of further previously unreleased recordings, including six unpublished songs. Just as tantalising for fans, the audio includes the band’s candid spoken exchanges on the studio floor in London and Montreux, giving the most revealing window yet into the four members’ creative process and the joy, in-jokes and banter on their return to working together.
Face It Alone was originally recorded during the band’s historic 1988 sessions for that album, a prolific period which saw the band lay down around 30 tracks, many of which were never released, but remained among those that didn’t make the final album cut. It was rediscovered when the band’s production and archive team returned to those sessions to work on The Miracle box set reissue.
The single will be the first new song featuring Freddie Mercury released in over 8 years. On 2014’s Queen Forever album, the band included three previously unheard tracks with Mercury, including Let Me in Your Heart Again, Love Kills, and There Must Be More to Life Than This.
Speaking of the rediscovered track, Brian May says:
“I’m happy that our team were able to find this track. After all these years, it’s great to hear all four of us … yes, Deacy is there too … working in the studio on a great song idea which never quite got completed … until now!”
Widely recognised as Queen’s strongest album of the 80’s and one of their most inspired, the 1989 released The Miracle was a global success reaching No. 1 in the UK and several major European markets, even re-establishing the band in the US where it delivered a gold album. Brian May has often cited the title track as his favourite Queen song of all time.
Buy the single Face It Alone
The Miracle Collector’s Edition is out from 18th November 2022
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Michelle is a musician and composer from the UK. She has performed across the UK and Europe and is passionate about arts education and opportunities for women and girls.
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