{"id":620668,"date":"2025-12-08T19:29:17","date_gmt":"2025-12-08T19:29:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/620668\/"},"modified":"2025-12-08T19:29:17","modified_gmt":"2025-12-08T19:29:17","slug":"the-queen-song-freddie-mercury-would-have-sang-until-he-bled","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/620668\/","title":{"rendered":"The Queen song Freddie Mercury would have sang until he bled"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Queen<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Spotify)<\/p>\n

Mon 8 December 2025 17:30, UK <\/p>\n

In the history of art, there is plenty of resilience to be found. There has to be. Whether it\u2019s from the long strife to make it or censorship at the top, industry in-fighting or external tragedy, sickness of the mind or illness of the body, there always seems to be something there to try and silence an artist, but Freddie Mercury<\/a> wasn\u2019t letting it happen.<\/p>\n

There is tragedy everywhere, and that\u2019s just a sad fact of the world. But it seems like the creative world gets more than its fair share of the struggle.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The worlds of art, music, and cinema; they all seem rife with losses. The so-called \u201927 Club\u2019<\/a> is only one example, as so many talents were lost so painfully young that they had to give them a label, turning the repeat tragedies into a phenomenon. But really, what we have here is the consequence of the stereotypical artist lifestyle proving deadly, and the world and country\u2019s governments proving time and time again that they don\u2019t really care about the artist as a person, only as a product.<\/p>\n

While the AIDS crisis went so far beyond the artistic community<\/a>, it took so much from them. As governments merely stigmatised the disease and refused for so long to do any real research into its cause or treatment, thousands upon thousands died in a devastating epidemic that saw so many pass in lonely, unkind conditions of social isolation. Watching this happen, artists responded as they always do. But also, when the art world has always and forever been so intertwined with the worlds of queerness and sexual liberation, some of the greatest creatives of the time were loss.<\/p>\n

Keith Haring, Leigh Bowery, Halston, Sylvester, Rock Hudson. They\u2019re the big names, but in the devastating statistics of the sheer amount of life loss from the misunderstood virus, there will be countless creatives who made an impact.<\/p>\n

\"Freddie<\/a>Queen frontman Freddie Mercury in the recoding booth. (Credits: Far Out \/ LastFM)<\/p>\n

Obviously, Freddie Mercury is arguably the most famous artist to have been claimed by the disease, and as he watched it devastate those around him and felt himself get sicker and sicker, it seems to only fuel his determination to leave a lasting legacy. <\/p>\n

Mercury\u2019s final years and days are a true tale of resilience and power. Desperate to keep creating even as his body was giving in, he spent the last of his life in the studio<\/a>, still blowing his bandmates away.<\/p>\n

One song represents that perfectly \u2013 \u2018The Show Must Go On\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy soul is painted like the wings of butterflies \/ Fairy tales of yesterday will grow but never die \/ I can fly, my friends,\u201d Mercury sings on the track that feels like his final remarks on a life well lived, a career well spent and a death he was coming to accept. It\u2019s a personal cry from him, clearly, but it also feels like a message to his community; both of queer people, and of people diagnosed HIV positive.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s likely why he seems so desperate to sing it, and sing it right. \u201cI\u2019ll sing it till I fucking bleed!\u201d Brian May remembered the vocalist saying in the studio.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember doing the demo for \u2018The Show Must Go On,\u2019 with the guide vocal, some of it in falsetto because I couldn\u2019t reach the top notes, and I said, \u2018Fred, I don\u2019t know if this is going to be possible to sing.\u2019 And he went, \u2018I\u2019ll fucking do it, darling,\u2019 vodka down, and went in and killed it, completely lacerated that vocal,\u201d May recalled as Mercury\u2019s waves of power didn\u2019t stop coming, even at the end.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was in a very poor state physically by that time, really hardly able to walk, but he could still bring that passion into the vocal,\u201d the guitarist said, as the singer wasn\u2019t going to let his disease steal this song.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Spotify) Mon 8 December 2025 17:30, UK In the history of art, there is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":620669,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3936],"tags":[77,13255,269,4575,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-620668","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-freddie-mercury","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-queen","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115685606834162331","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=620668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620668\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/620669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=620668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=620668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=620668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}