Queen was on hand to help Queen Elizabeth II rock out her Platinum Jubilee. At the June 4 event, the iconic British rock band and their “American Idol” alum lead singer Adam Lambert performed a rousing medley of familiar smash hits like “Don’t Stop Me Now” and “We Are the Champions.” Lambert has been the voice of the band since 2011, but it was Freddie Mercury who first lent his vocals to these rock classics. As the band rose to fame throughout the 1970s, Mercury became an icon for his vibrant stage persona, decadent offstage exploits, and operatic vocal delivery. Mercury died of complications from HIV/AIDS in 1991. However, besides their Platinum Jubilee performance Queen has given fans another reason to celebrate. As per Variety, the band has announced that they will be releasing a previously lost track featuring vocals by the legendary Freddie Mercury in September.
The band’s drummer Roger Taylor told BBC’s Zoe Ball, “We did find a little gem from Freddie that we’d kind of forgotten about and it was — It’s wonderful. Actually, it was a real discovery. It’s from The Miracle sessions.”
Taylor is referring to The Miracle, the band’s thirteenth studio album, which was released in 1989. Recording sessions for the album produced a lot of material, with some tracks used as b-sides and bonus tracks on the CD release.
Brian May, the band’s guitarist, described the now restored ‘lost’ track featuring Mercury as, “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, ‘okay, we can do this and this.’ It’s like kind of stitching bits together. But it’s beautiful, it’s a touching piece.”
Taylor chimed in that the piece was “passionate.” This isn’t the first time Queen has unearthed previously unreleased material from Mercury and shared it with fans. In 2014, the band released a compilation album of unheard Mercury material called Queen Forever.
It is an apt title, as interest in the band and love from their fans for the memory of Freddie Mercury has undoubtedly had a long reign, with no end in sight.
