Queen has released a rediscovered song featuring Freddie Mercury, “Face It Alone,” as a single, which was recorded during the band’s 1988 sessions for their 13th album The Miracle. The song will appear on the band’s upcoming eight-disc Queen The Miracle Collector’s Edition box set, out Nov. 18.
The band first revealed that they found the song during an interview for their performance at the recent summer 2022 Platinum Jubilee celebration for the late Queen Elizabeth II.
“Yes, we did find a little gem from Freddie that we’d kind of forgotten about,” revealed drummer Roger Taylor. “It’s wonderful, a real discovery. It’s a very passionate piece.”
Brian May elaborated on the previously unreleased track and how they brought the entire song together. “It was kind of hiding in plain sight,” added May. “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 stitching bits together.”
In comparison to “The Invisible Man” and “I Want It All” and some of the other tracks on The Miracle, “Face It Alone” is slower and moodier with lyrics centered 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.
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.”
‘THE MIRACLE’ SUPER DELUXE COLLECTOR’S EDITION
In 2014, the band released another track, “There Must Be More to Life Than This,” a duet featuring Mercury and Michael Jackson, on their Queen Forever compilation, which also featured previously unreleased tracks “Let Me in Your Heart Again” and “Love Kills.” Another posthumous release was a stripped-down version of Mercury’s 1986 solo single “Time,” released as “Time Waits for No One” in 2019.
May and Taylor have continued to perform live together along with vocalist Adam Lambert since 2011, and recently performed the band’s 1977 classic “We Will Rock You” at the recent Jubilee, which was tied to a skit featuring Queen Elizabeth II and Paddington Bear.
“I’m happy that our team was able to find this track,” said May in a statement. “After all these years, it’s great to hear all four of us—yes, Deacy [John Deacon] is there too—working in the studio on a great song idea which never quite got completed, until now.”
