It feels like we’ve been bidding farewell to Freddy Mercury for a while now. From the re-release of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, paired with ‘These Are the Days of Our Lives’, in the weeks following his death, to George Michael’s tributes on the ‘Five Live EP’, to this.
Living on My Own, by Freddie Mercury (his 1st and only solo #1)
2 weeks, from 8th – 22nd August 1993
And of the three, this remix of his minor 1985 hit is the tribute that Freddie himself might have enjoyed the most. On the one hand it is a shame that his solitary solo number one isn’t a blistering rocker; but then he was a musician who never let himself be restricted within one genre. ‘Living on My Own’ is updated nicely for the early-mid nineties, with a chilled out house beat, by a production trio called No More Brothers and, although it was still listed on the charts as the 1985 original, it was undoubtedly this remix that sent it to #1.
I say that Freddie would have liked this version and, presumptuous as that might be, if you listen to the original, from his ‘Mr. Bad Guy’ solo album, then it was already much more dance than rock. The lyrics, meanwhile, are very personal: Sometimes I feel I’m gonna break down and cry, Nowhere to go, Nothing to do with my time… I get lonely… They’re based heavily on quotations from Greta Garbo (which feels very Freddie Mercury…) and each chorus ends on the positive mantra: Got to be some good times ahead… Though knowing how soon it all would end, that line is tinged with sadness.
I will also give a shoutout to an earlier remix – which I initially thought was the chart-topping version – by Julian Raymond. This is my favourite of the three versions, with a faster, industrial beat, more of Mercury’s trademark yodelling, alongside a frenetic piano line. It was commissioned as part of the ‘Freddie Mercury Album’, released in November 1992 to mark the 1st anniversary of his death, but never released as a single.
The video to the 1993 version of ‘Living on My Own’ was the same as the 1985 one, and featured footage of a Drag Ball held for Mercury’s 39th birthday party. I love this quote: “Because of the garishly costumed homosexuals and transvestites celebrating a decadent, raucous party in the video clip, the BBC long refused to broadcast the music video on its channels.” Good old Beeb, always ready to ban those garish homosexuals…
I hadn’t realised quite how well Freddie Mercury’s solo career – while nothing compared to Queen’s discography – had been ticking along since the mid-80s, when he made the Top 10 with ‘Love Kills’. The ‘Living on My Own’ remix was his seventh, and final, Top 20 hit, and a huge smash across Europe. (Especially in France, where it did a Bryan Adams and stayed at #1 for fifteen weeks! Bryan or Freddie… I know who I’d rather have clogging up the number one spot…)
With this we can finally bid farewell to Freddie Mercury. Three number one singles in his lifetime, two after his death, and one well-intentioned tribute in-between. For my money, he is the greatest frontman of all time. Not only could he rock with the very best; he could do opera, musical theatre, pop, disco, camp ditties about girls with fat bottoms… And he sounds just as at home here, on a house track released two years after his death, as he does anywhere.
The UK Number Ones Blog 
It’s odd that I don’t remember his stuff playing over here. Queen vanished after The Game for a long long time. I do remember Radio GaGa” started a small comeback for them. I think…and it’s just me but they didn’t tour here much if at all after The Game tour. That album was huge here…but their others didn’t get a lot of play…Hot Space was hated here and there I believe. I liked it. One of my favorite Queen songs off that album is the one about Lennon…”Life Is Real”…if you don’t know it…look it up…it SOUNDS like Lennon…the melody anyway.
Yeah, Queen and the US in the 80s is a weird one… It’s commonly accepted that the ‘I Want to Break Free’ video killed them over there, but it can’t just be that. Maybe it was part disco-backlash too, as ‘Another One Bites the Dust’ was such a huge hit in the US… I just listened to ‘Life Is Real’ – very ‘Double Fantasy’ era Lennon!
I loved that video! No I think Hot Space did a number on them. After The Game which was HUGE here…people were expecting more of that. They didn’t get it with Hot Space and then people lost interest…but you could be right about the disco thing…but it was really big. I never thought of that as disco.
Yes it did sound like a Lennon song! Not his voice but the song itself.
With ‘Another One…’ I just think it might have been so huge, and catchy – and it is an annoying song in some regards – that it turned people off them for a while…
In 1978 I was 11 years old…and I remember a friend of mine bringing the News of the World album to school…I loved that cover…anyway they were huge here…but they did stop touring here in 1982. Was it becasue of low sales or other reasons?
So what I’ve just read on Wikipedia (and from what I remember from the ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ movie 😄) it was a mix of ‘Hot Space’ being poorly received, record label probs in America, tension between the band members (which led to Mercury’s solo album, on which ‘Living on My Own’ was appeared), and the ‘I Want to Break Free’ video being banned by MTV. Live Aid seems to have been the moment they brought it all back together.
Yes Live Aid helped them a lot. They still never got back to where they were with The Game but at least they were talked about then.
I know some people who say…”they are over the top” and of course say…uh YEA that is what they are all about lol.
I’m reading now… reasons:
New Wave
Negative reactions to disco….and Hot Space not being up to their previous efforts…combining not touring here.
You know what? I would have never said “disco”….but Hot Space did have quite a bit thinking about it.
I’m not sure about that album, but Another One… certainly has a disco beat. Even ‘Under Pressure’ has a bit of funk to it.
I do remember when disco or anything to do with John Travolta was poison. Anything 70s was…then it flipped a little later on.
It’s weird…what you are saying is true…I just never thought of disco at the time…but I wasn’t looking for it.
Queen lost popularity in the US during the 80s for several reasons:
1. Hot Space – which is much more dance/funk/disco-oriented than it is a rock album – was released in 1982, when anti-disco sentiment was at it’s strongest and a lot of acts associated with the disco era were completely shunned from Top 40 radio play. Disco sucks (it doesn’t but at the time it did), disco was super uncool. Queen obviously weren’t a disco act, but Hot Space was released at the worst time possible. It alienated their core rock audience – the rock audience at the time in the US was massive and it’s own market.
2. “I Want to Break Free” video was extremely poorly received in the US. People thought that it was advocating transvestism. US culture also doesn’t really embrace camp, vaudeville and cross-dressing/drag like the UK does.
3. Let’s be real: none of Queen’s 80s albums post-The Game are that noteworthy, besides the singles. Since rock by the 80s was a album-oriented genre, that also further pushed away the rock audience.
4. Queen stopped touring in response to the backlash to “I Want to Break Free” and Hot Space, but this also further caused fans to lose interest.
5. There was also a homophobia factor, which was probably quite strong during the Regan era. I think this really damaged Elton John’s career in the late-70s and the 80s as US culture became deeply conservative.
Maybe because I’m such a fan of British rock and have always been…the I Want To Break Free stuff I don’t even remember. I remember the video and I thought…it’s just them being them.
Personally I think it was Hot Space and them not touring anymore.
I do agree with you on their post The Game albums…that was their peak here…and no they didn’t come up with anything near it.
Their last album as a band I didn’t even knew about.
Great record this one, and a nice farewell to Freddie. His solo stuff never really gripped me as a rule, but Queen were an instant fave band from the moment I heard Seven Seas Of Rhye. I went off Queen during Hot Fuss too, they just weren’t good enough in comparison to previous highlights, but they very much had a huge comeback thanks to video promos in the UK – Radio Ga Ga was a stunning video, and great record, I Want To Break Free was hilarious and the record very good and they both boosted their profile setting up Live Aid. The Highlander movie soundtrack album was pretty good too, my mum was mad on Freddie at that time and especially A Kind Of Magic. We played it at her funeral, along with Elvis and Louis Armstrong.