{"id":37905,"date":"2025-11-13T02:34:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-13T02:34:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/37905\/"},"modified":"2025-11-13T02:34:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T02:34:09","slug":"special-40th-anniversary-vinyl-reissues-of-queen-frontman-freddie-mercurys-only-solo-album-mr-bad-guy-due-out-in-december","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/37905\/","title":{"rendered":"Special 40th Anniversary Vinyl Reissues of Queen Frontman Freddie Mercury\u2019s Only Solo Album, \u2018Mr. Bad Guy,\u2019 Due Out in December"},"content":{"rendered":"

April 2025 marked the 40th anniversary of the release of Queen<\/a> frontman Freddie Mercury<\/a>\u2019s only solo studio album, Mr. Bad Guy. Now, two special vinyl editions of the record will be released on December 5<\/a> to celebrate the milestone.<\/p>\n

One release is an LP pressed on 180-gram, translucent-green vinyl. The second is a picture disc feature the Mr. Bad Guy cover photo of Mercury wearing dark sunglasses and a white tank top. Both special 40th anniversary Mr. Bad Guy LPs are available at Mercury\u2019s online store<\/a>, and can be pre-ordered now.<\/p>\n

[RELATED: On This Day in 1985, Freddie Mercury Released His Only Solo Studio Album Mr. Bad Guy]<\/a><\/p>\n

The green-vinyl reissue features a mix created by Queen\u2019s longtime studio engineering team of Justin Shirley-Smith and Joshua J. Macrae. The mix first appeared on the 2019 Freddie Mercury box set Never Boring.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe went back to the original multi-track tapes,\u201d Shirley-Smith said of the mix. \u201cIt\u2019s a great collection of songs and Freddie\u2019s vocal performance is absolutely extraordinary. The idea wasn\u2019t to try to make it sound like they would make it now, it was to make it sound like it would have then if they\u2019d had better technology and more time. And of course, it\u2019s a massive honor to work on anything Freddie did, and we always treat it with the utmost respect.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition, a new line of Mr. Bad Guy merch can be purchased at FreddieMercury.com. Among the items are T-shirts, tank tops, a varsity jacket, and a zippered hoodie.<\/p>\n

About the Mr. Bad Guy Album<\/p>\n

Mr. Bad Guy is an 11-track collection that found the legendary singer exploring dance music and pop sounds. It was recorded between early 1983 and early 1985 at Musicland Studios in Munich, Germany. Freddie co-produced Mr. Bad Guy with Reinhold Mack, who collaborated with Queen on the band\u2019s four previous studio albums.<\/p>\n

Mercury wrote all of the songs, sang lead vocals, and played piano and synthesizer on the album. The record also included contributions from guitarist Paul Vincent, drummer Curt Cress, bassist Stephan Wissnet, and Queen touring keyboardist Fred Mandel.<\/p>\n

Mr. Bad Guy peaked at No. 6 on the U.K. album chart. Four singles were released from the album\u2014\u201cI Was Born to Love You,\u201d \u201cMade in Heaven,\u201d \u201cLiving on My Own,\u201d and \u201cLove Me Like There\u2019s No Tomorrow.\u201d Lead single \u201cI Was Born to Love You\u201d reached No. 11 on the U.K. singles tally. The other tunes peaked at No. 57, No. 50, and No. 76, respectively.<\/p>\n

After Mercury\u2019s death in 1991, Queen reworked \u201cI Was Born to Love You\u201d and \u201cMade in Heaven\u201d and included the songs on its 1995 Made in Heaven album.<\/p>\n

Another song featured on Mr. Bad Guy, \u201cThere Must Be More to Life Than This,\u201d originally was recorded by Queen as a duet with Michael Jackson in 1981 during the sessions for the band\u2019s Hot Space album. The duet version of the tune finally was released in 2014 on the Queen Forever compilation.<\/p>\n

Regarding his decision to release a solo album, Mercury said about Mr. Bad Guy at the time, \u201cI had a lot of ideas bursting to get out and there were a lot of musical territories I wanted to explore which I really couldn\u2019t do within Queen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reflecting on the project, Freddie noted, \u201cI put my heart and soul into Mr. Bad Guy and I think it\u2019s a very natural album. It had some very moving ballads\u2014things to do with sadness and pain, but at the same time there were some very frivolous and tongue-in-cheek songs, because that is my nature. I think the songs on that album reflect the state of my life, a diverse selection of moods and a whole spectrum of what my life was.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Bad Guy\u2019s title track featured accompaniment by the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra, something Mercury said he was particularly proud of.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can go through all the Queen albums and there isn\u2019t one song that actually had a fully-fledged orchestra on it,\u201d he maintained. \u201cI thought, \u2018I\u2019ll be the first one to do it.\u2019 It\u2019s quite outrageous. I just said, \u2018Play all the notes you haven\u2019t played in your life before,\u2019 so they went completely crazy. And that\u2019s the outcome. Very bombastic, very pompous, very me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Bad Guy Vinyl LP Track List:<\/p>\n

Side One<\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s Turn It On\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMade in Heaven\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI Was Born to Love You\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFoolin\u2019 Around\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYour Kind of Lover\u201d<\/p>\n

Side Two<\/p>\n

\u201cMr. Bad Guy\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMan Made Paradise\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere Must Be More to Life Than This\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLiving on My Own\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMy Love Is Dangerous\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLove Me Like There\u2019s No Tomorrow<\/p>\n

(Photo by Phil Dent\/Redferns)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"April 2025 marked the 40th anniversary of the release of Queen frontman Freddie Mercury\u2019s only solo studio album,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37906,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[11365,671,9,24,63,666,122,124,123],"class_list":{"0":"post-37905","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-queens","8":"tag-classic-rock","9":"tag-freddie-mercury","10":"tag-new-york","11":"tag-new-york-city","12":"tag-nyc","13":"tag-queen","14":"tag-queens","15":"tag-queens-headlines","16":"tag-queens-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37905\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}