Before Queen and Adam Lambert hit the stage for Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee concert on June 4, founding members Brian May and Roger Taylor revealed that they are planning to share a previously unreleased song featuring Freddie Mercury in September.
The trio was interviewed for the event on BBC Radio 2 by Zoe Ball, whom Taylor told: “We did find a little gem from Freddie, that we’d kind of forgotten about and it was — It’s wonderful. Actually, it was real discovery. It’s from ‘The Miracle’ sessions, and I think it’s going to be out in September.”
“The Miracle” is Queen’s 13th studio album, released in 1989 and recorded during a highly productive point in time for the band in 1988. During a radio interview with DJ Mike Read, Mercury stated that they had recorded 30 songs while working on “The Miracle.” Some tracks became B-sides, while “Hang On In There” and”Chinese Torture” were used as bonus tracks for the original CD release.
May added that the song 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, ‘okay, we can do this and this.’ It’s like kind of stitching bits together. But it’s beautiful, it’s touching piece.”
“It’s a very passionate piece,” Taylor concurred.
Since Mercury’s death in 1991, Queen has released several previously unreleased tracks featuring the singer, including 2014’s “Queen Forever,” a compilation of such songs.
Lambert has been performing lead vocals for the band since 2011 when he replaced Paul Rodgers who had toured with the band between 2004 and 2009. For Queen and Lambert’s most recent performance at the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, the band performed a medley of some of their biggest hits including “We Will Rock You,” “Don’t Stop Me Now” and “We Are the Champions.”
Queen and Lambert are presently touring together and are set to do three dates at London’s O2 Arena this week before returning to play a string of six shows from the 14 to the 21 of June.
