18 June 1996 – Queen released ‘Heaven For Everyone’ single with ‘Soul Brother’ as the B-Side in the USA 🇺🇸
The buzz, this is a brand new Queen song recorded with Freddie that was shelved for years until now!
The beautiful song, ‘Heaven For Everyone’ was written by Roger Taylor for his band ‘The Cross’ in 1987.
Freddie went to the studio to visit him while The Cross were recording their debut album ‘Shove It,’ he absolutely loved the song and told Roger, ‘Oh God, you gotta let me sing this!’ He recorded his vocals but due to contractual issues, Queen couldn’t add this song to their catalogue. It went into the vault. Crystal Taylor was instrumental in Roger keeping the song for a future Queen project.
Four years after Freddie’s passing, Queen revisited this lovely track, reworked it and included it on their fifteenth and final studio album, ‘Made In Heaven.’
Queen’s re-recording is vastly superior, and not only because of Freddie’s ethereal vocal performance!
It was once described as the finest Queen song never released. Freddie’s vocals are superb. Roger said, “When Freddie sings a song, you realize your own limits and how much further Freddie could take a song vocally”.
‘Heaven For Everyone’ 👉 https://youtu.be/yI8lrvKLzg0
The B-side is ‘Soul Brother’ written by Freddie Mercury but credited to Queen. It was recorded during ‘The Game’ sessions. This is an underrated Queen track (IMHO) and arguably one of Freddie’s best vocal performances.
“Freddie told me one day he had a surprise for me – he said, ‘I’ve written a song about you – but it needs your touch on it!’ I think, curiously, we were both working on songs separately which referred to each other. Can’t remember which one of mine it was, since a lot of my songs were obliquely aimed at him (as well as to be sung by him!). Anyway. we got in the studio and he played this song. Now whether it was really about me I don’t know. But I thought it was fab. I know he wrote it in about 15 minutes!. As to why not on album (The Game) – well, Freddie deliberately wrote it as a B-side to fill a gap, so I imagine the album was already sewn up.”
Brian May – 2003
‘Soul Brother’ 👉 https://youtu.be/78Dmumb9eZ0
