More than three decades after their 1988 sessions for their 13th album, The Miracle, Queen has released a video for the previously unreleased track, “Face It Alone,” featuring late singer Freddie Mercury’s vocals.
Videos by American Songwriter
For the video, director Simon Lupton created a visual storybook from the band’s Miracles-era, featuring animation, shots of a stage set with figure versions of the band, and images from Queen’s Mountain Studios in Montreux, Switzerland, along with videos of Queen working on songs together during The Miracle era.
“The intention was to create, despite how the lyrics might be interpreted, an upbeat video that celebrated the fact that the period during which this song was recorded was one of the most prolific and cohesive in the band’s history,” said Lupton. “The meaning of the song has been interpreted that when something catastrophic occurs in your life, your instinct is to surround yourself with what is dearest and most important to you.”
In comparison to the uptempo “The Invisible Man” and the anthemic “I Want It All,” “Face It Alone” slows the pace around a more pensive and moodier narrative centering around facing one’s fears—When something so near and dear to life / Explodes inside / You feel your soul / Is set on fire / When something so deep and so far and wide / Falls down beside / Your cries can be heard / So loud and clear.
“Immersing himself in his work, and surrounding himself with his bandmates, gave Freddie that control,” added Lupton. “Of course, in the end, you have to face it alone, but the people around you can help how you face it.”
“Face It Alone” is the first new Queen song to feature the late Freddie Mercury’s vocals in eight years, and one Queen’s Brian May calls “beautiful and touching” and one of several on the upcoming Queen The Miracle Collector’s Edition box set, out Nov. 18.
The collection features original Miracle recording sessions and five previously unreleased Queen songs, including “Dog With A Bone,” “I Guess We’re Falling Out,” “You Know You Belong To Me,” “When Love Breaks Up,” and “Water,” in addition to “Face It Alone.”
Following Mercury’s death on Nov. 24, 1991, nine months after the release of the band’s final album together, Innuendo, Queen also released the song “Made In Heaven.” In 2014, the band released “There Must Be More to Life Than This,” a duet featuring Mercury and Michael Jackson (originally released on Mercury’s solo debut Mr. bad Guy in 1985) on their Queen Forever compilation, and a stripped-down version of Mercury’s 1986 solo single “Time,” renamed “Time Waits for No One,” in 2019.
“We did find a little gem from Freddie that we’d kind of forgotten about,” revealed drummer Roger Taylor of the newly rediscovered song. “It’s wonderful, a real discovery. It’s a very passionate piece.”
May added, “I’m happy that our team was able to find this track. After all these years, it’s great to hear all four of us—yes, Deacy [Queen bassist John Deacon] is there too—working in the studio on a great song idea which never quite got completed, until now.”
Photo: Courtesy of Hollywood Records / Disney
