Face It Alone: Queen to release unheard song with Freddie Mercury, originally thought “unsalvageable”
Billboards teasing the new track have been spotted in London, Canada, Mexico and Japan.
Image: Gary Gershoff/Getty
Queen have announced that they will be releasing a new track later this week, made from a previously-unheard demo made with late vocalist Freddie Mercury.
Entitled Face It Alone, the forthcoming release features Freddie Mercury on vocals and was originally recorded in 1989 – around the same time that the band were working on their thirteenth studio album, The Miracle.
Rumours about the announcement first sparked last week after a series of promotional billboards were spotted around the world. Simply stating “Queen – Face It Alone”, the advertisements also showed a photograph of the late singer and a QR code that, when scanned, played a brief snippet of the upcoming track.
Billboards have been spotted in London, Canada, Mexico, Japan and more. Last Friday (7 October) the band added to the anticipation, taking to Twitter to advise fans to keep an eye out for a new announcement.
📢Queen Fans!
Have you seen the news? Keep your eyes peeled & share your photos of where you’ve seen our Billboards using #FaceItAlone 👑#London 🗺️📍 pic.twitter.com/L3UH0cSRKi— Queen (@QueenWillRock) October 7, 2022
Earlier this year, surviving members Brian May and Roger Taylor revealed that a new track called Face It Alone was expected to be released in September.
Speaking with BBC Radio 2, the duo confirmed that they initially thought the recordings were ‘unsalvageable’ but were pleased to hear the ‘touching’ final product.
“We did find a little gem from Freddie, that we’d kind of forgotten about. It’s wonderful. Actually, it was a real discovery,” Taylor stated (transcribed via Stereogum). “May originally thought the recording was unsalvageable, but engineers proved him wrong.”
“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.”
Face It Alone will be available this Thursday (13 October).