The Royal Mint, the United Kingdom\u2019s official maker of British coins, will be releasing a new Freddie Mercury coin on Tuesday, November 18.<\/p>\n
A message from The Royal Mint reveals: \u201cWe are delighted to announce that Freddie Mercury will be the next act to join our Music Legends line-up. Available to buy from 9 AM, GMT tomorrow, Tuesday 18 November.\u201d<\/p>\n
To order, visit The Royal Mint website here<\/a> at 9 AM (4 AM, EST) on Tuesday, November 18.<\/p>\n \u201cMr Bad Guy? That\u2019s me!\u201d<\/em> \u2013 Freddie Mercury<\/p>\n The 40th anniversary of Freddie Mercury\u2019s majestic debut solo album, Mr Bad Guy, is being celebrated with a lavish new vinyl reissue. Click here<\/a> to pre-order now in the Official Freddie Mercury Store, along with a new Mr Bad Guy Merchandise Range. Click here<\/a> to pre-save digitally.<\/p>\n Originally released end of April 1985, Mr Bad Guy was Mercury\u2019s first album away from the group he had co-founded 15 years before and helped steer to staggering artistic and commercial heights. It found him breaking free from the confines of a band, swapping Queen\u2019s chameleonic, arena-sized music for a set of songs that combined his unique songwriting with a driving, dance and pop-inspired sound.<\/p>\n Forty years after it first came out, Mr Bad Guy will be reissued on spectacular 180g translucent green vinyl on December 5 as well as picture disc LP exclusively via D2C.<\/p>\n \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 said Mercury of the album at the time.<\/p>\n Mr Bad Guy showed a very different side to the singer, one that had been hinted at a few years earlier on Queen\u2019s more dance-orientated Hot Space album. It was partly a love letter to the club scene he was immersed in but also a chance for Freddie to reveal more of himself than he ever had before.<\/p>\n Mr Bad Guy was recorded over a period of several months at Munich\u2019s Musicland Studio, where Queen had made their most recent albums. It was co-produced by Mercury and Reinhold Mack, who had worked with Queen since 1980\u2019s hugely successful The Game album.<\/p>\n The singer had tested the waters for a solo career with his 1984 single Love Kills, a pulsing dance track produced by disco legend Giorgio Moroder which had appeared on the soundtrack for a restored version of iconic silent movie Metropolis. Love Kills\u2019 success would embolden Mercury to travel even further down that avenue.<\/p>\n Mr Bad Guy found him shouldering all the songwriting duties for the album, purposefully avoiding asking his Queen bandmates to appear on the album. He enlisted a team of crack musicians, including drummer Curt Cress, bassist Stephan Wissnet, guitarist Paul Vincent and Queen touring keyboard player Fred Mandel.<\/p>\n Mr Bad Guy was partly shaped by Munich. When he wasn\u2019t in the studio, or spending time with Mack and his family, the singer could be found soaking up the German city\u2019s nightlife. The wild heartbeat of its bars and clubs fed into songs such as the exhilarating \u201cLiving On My Own,\u201d with its incredible, acrobatic vocal performance and scat-inspired singing, \u201cI Was Born To Love You\u201d\u2019s euphoric rush, and the pulsing, funky \u201cLet\u2019s Turn It On.\u201d<\/p>\n A handful of the album\u2019s songs wouldn\u2019t have sounded out of place on a Queen record. The soaring \u201cMade In Heaven\u201d showcases Mercury the epic balladeer, and would be re-worked by the band themselves for 1995\u2019s posthumous Made In Heaven album. The yearning \u201cThere Must Be More To Life Than This\u201d (\u201cAbout two people who are lonely,\u201d according to the singer) had actually been written for Hot Space, and was even considered as a duet with Michael Jackson at one point. A version featuring Jackson would later emerge on Queen\u2019s Forever album released in November 2014.<\/p>\n But the freedom of being away from the Queen mothership allowed him to experiment musically. The dramatic, piano-led opening of \u201cYour Kind Of Lover\u201d swiftly erupts into playful energy, \u201cMy Love Is Dangerous\u201d is unexpectedly built on a reggae beat, and Mercury\u2019s remarkable operatic vocals on \u201cMan Made Paradise\u201d point the way to his collaboration with Montserrat Caball\u00e9 on Barcelona a few years later.<\/p>\n Most outrageous of all is the song \u201cMr Bad Guy\u201d itself, which features the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra backing Mercury as he gleefully revels in his reputation for devilry. \u201cYou can go through all the Queen albums and there isn\u2019t one song that actually had a fully-fledged orchestra on it,\u201d Mercury said proudly of the latter track. \u201cI thought, \u2018I\u2019ll be the first one to do it.\u2019 It\u2018s 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 Originally released in April 1985, Mr Bad Guy reached #6 in the UK album charts and produced four singles in \u201cI Was Born To Love You,\u201d \u201cMade In Heaven,\u201d \u201cLiving On My Own\u201d (which reached Number 1 in the UK when it was re-released in remixed form in 1993, two years after the singer\u2019s death) and \u201cLove Me Like There\u2019s No Tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n The singles were accompanied by series of characteristically flamboyant promo videos, including \u201cMade In Heaven\u201d\u2019s recreation of scenes from Igor Stravinsky\u2019s The Rite of Spring and Dante\u2019s Inferno shot at a replica of the Royal Opera House stage in a North London warehouse and \u201cLiving On My Own\u201d\u2019s OTT drag ball-themed video, filmed at the singer\u2019s 39th birthday party.<\/p>\n The new translucent green vinyl reissue features a mix of the album by Queen\u2019s longtime sound team of Justin Shirley-Smith and Joshua J Macrae, which originally appeared on 2019\u2019s Never Boring box set. The new mix stays true to Freddie\u2019s original vision but has the benefits of technology and resources that were not available in the 1980s.<\/p>\n \u201cWe went back to the original multi-track tapes,\u201d says Shirley-Smith. \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 honour to work on anything Freddie did, and we always treat it with the utmost respect.\u201d<\/p>\n Forty years on, Mr Bad Guy remains a pivotal album for Freddie Mercury. It allowed him to flex his creative muscles and seek out new sounds and styles, ensuring he returned to Queen re-energised and revitalised.<\/p>\n \u201cI put my heart and soul into Mr Bad Guy and I think it\u2019s a very natural album,\u201d said Mercury. \u201cIt had some very moving ballads \u2013 things 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 Celebrating its 40th anniversary, Mr Bad Guy is reissued on 180g translucent green vinyl on December 5 via Universal, as well as on picture disc LP exclusively via D2C.<\/p>\n Tracklisting:<\/p>\n Side One Side Two \u2013 All songs written and composed by Freddie Mercury “Prophets Of Addiction is a modern day Hanoi Rocks meets The 69 Eyes with plenty of Pop hooks and Whisky drenched vocals.” – Metal Sludge.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/bravewords.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/freddiemercurybanner1125-750x213.jpg\")
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\u201cLet\u2019s Turn It On \u201d
\u201cMade In Heaven \u201d
\u201cI Was Born To Love You\u201d
\u201cFoolin\u2019 Around \u201d
\u201cYour Kind Of Lover \u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMr. Bad Guy\u201d
\u201cMan Made Paradise\u201d
\u201cThere Must Be More To Life Than This\u201d
\u201cLiving On My Own\u201d
\u201cMy Love Is Dangerous\u201d
\u201cLove Me Like There\u2019s No Tomorrow\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013 Produced by Freddie Mercury, Mack, Justin Shirley-Smith and Joshua J Macrae<\/p>\n