Bibek Acharya
The fact that Freddie Mercury was working until the end of his life is one of the greatest musical phenomena in rock history. Anyone in their right mind would have been doing anything else other than working during the final years of their life, but Mercury was music incarnate in many senses, so anything that he did should have been documented if it wanted to stand the test of time. But for all of the Mercury-led songs in the Queen catalogue, there were a couple of tunes that would do a better job at encapsulating everything he was all about.
Then again, it can be a little bit harder to showcase anyone’s stuff when working in a group of four people. Even though Mercury was an electrifying stage presence whenever he lit up the stage, he still had to interpret John Deacon’s R&B and soul side on ‘Another One Bites the Dust’ and lead the crowd in stomping along to Brian May’s ‘We Will Rock You’ whenever he got the crowd going.
But there are more than a few tunes in their catalogue that are gold-certified Mercury content. The band were always pushing back against being defined by any one genre, but listening to the showtunes that they had in their arsenal, you can tell that Mercury is having a ball when playing tracks like ‘Lazing On a Sunday Afternoon’ of crooning his lungs out when singing along to ‘You Take My Breath Away’.
Like any band, though, there comes a moment when everyone needs a break, and it wasn’t long before everyone started working on solo careers. But while Mercury should have had one of the greatest solo acts of anyone, there was always something that seemed to be holding him back without the rest of the band behind him when he started working on albums like Mr Bad Guy or even the wild genre pivots like on ‘Barcelona’.
When Mercury reached the final years of his life, he never had a chance to see where many of his solo songs were going. All of his energy was being channelled into what would become Made in Heaven years later, but when looking at the box set Never Boring, fans got a good look at the version of Mercury they knew like an old friend, assembling all the great music under one roof for people to enjoy.
And as far as his lifelong friend Dave Clark was concerned, this was the version of Mercury that the frontman always wanted to be known for, saying, “He didn’t take anything too serious. The new album of Freddie that’s out, Never Boring, it’s an amazing title because that’s Freddie! He was never boring.” But out of all the songs Mercury wrote, ‘The Great Pretender’ might be one of the finest performances he made as a solo artist.
Despite not penning the tune, hearing him talk about himself as the consummate performer who’s always hiding something back is as close to the real version of Mercury that many of us will ever get. He always left everything bare whenever he got onstage, but he knew that there were certain things tucked away in his personal history that would always be reserved for him alone.
But that doesn’t make the stage persona any more engaging to listen to. He may have been an enigma to many people whom he worked with, but Mercury preferred to channel his energy through music rather than going deeper into his back pages. After all, who needed to know the boring parts of his personal life when he made everything seem like the most larger-than-life event possible whenever he got onstage.
