(Credits: Far Out / Paul Williams)
Sun 1 February 2026 15:30, UK
Whenever Freddie Mercury had an opinion, he wouldn’t often shy away from sharing it. Once, when asked to describe himself as an artist, he said, “I’m just a musical prostitute, my dear.”
The singer often had a way of saying the most artistically intelligent remarks with an air of crudeness like this, but this was usually an effort to throw interviewers off scent or wade through a handful of other viewpoints before getting to the one that actually matters. After all, after the “prostitute” comment, he eventually said that there isn’t one singular way to describe himself as an artist, because “I’m just me”.
Being able to share his opinions, no matter how far-out, was always what made him the genius he was. Although very much a team operation, Queen no doubt wouldn’t have reached the explosive heights it did without Mercury’s constant push for boundary-pushing and stylistic exploration, and often it was his ideas that inspired the others to greatness.
However, as with most geniuses, great ideas usually came once he’d trialled all the bad ones first, and despite his masterful mind, Mercury did have bad ideas once in a while. In fact, there was one instance where he’d floated an idea to the rest of the group, and they’d had to gently encourage him to go away and have a better think about whether he actually felt they should do it.
According to Brian May, the album title for 1989’s The Miracle could have been starkly different had Mercury’s initial idea been given the green light. “He came in one day and announced, ‘I’ve got this amazing idea,” May recalled to Mojo. “You know Michael Jackson has just put out this album called Bad? Well, listen… What do you think about us calling our next album Good?’”
He went on, “We all looked at each other and said, ‘Well, maybe we should think about it, Freddie’. It wasn’t one of his world-shattering ideas, but looking back, maybe we were wrong…”
Granted, these moments didn’t come often, and when they did, the others were good at steering Mercury elsewhere. As May also explained, when it came to his general streak with searching for greatness, he’d often be so excited about an idea that he’d find it difficult to get his words out.
“Freddie’s ideas were off the wall and cheeky and different – and we tended to encourage them,” said May.
All things considered, it’s anyone’s guess whether naming the record Good would have been a, well, good move. It probably would have added layers to it beyond its obvious swipe at Jackson, considering that it was during a turbulent time for both May and Mercury, with the former having marriage problems and the latter having just been diagnosed with HIV.
However, when you look at it like that, its name seemed more prophetic than something as simple and one-dimensional as Good. The one they eventually chose (because it was also reportedly called The Invisible Men at first) captured everything they were about at that moment in time – the music and the artistic vision, despite all the struggles that came up along the way.
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