Queen, Mr. Bad Guy, and My Gripe with Remastered Editions

or: Taking a Trip Down Mercury Lane

(Mercury Records)

Quick author’s note: I would have liked to put a blurb here apologizing for the 16-month gap between this post and the last, but a) I’ve apologized too many times in that way already, and b) this post is a slightly different from the usual “journal entry” style post that I typically post. So, I’ll save the apology (and some reflections on my growth as a writer) for the next post.

I can’t recall how long I’ve been sitting on this incomplete draft, though I remember drafting the entire first section in one sitting before adding bits and pieces as months flew by. I’ve been meaning to post again, especially feeling pressured to do so by multiple other people’s blogs, but I’m reluctant to start a new post from scratch and figured it’s better anyway push something out that could have seen the light of day a long, long time ago.

Meeting Her Majesty, Queen, for the First Time

In December 2018, I had managed to snag a spot on a field trip that was going to see the movie Bohemian Rhapsody in theatres. Terrible movie in retrospect, one I grew to loathe as time went on, but I owe many great things in my life to it. I never paid attention to any of the Godawful (yet, somehow, Oscar-winning) editing within the film, nor could recognize the glaring inconsistencies with how they told Queen’s story—this having been my first exposure to the band aside from the hits everyone and their mother knows (stomp-stomp-CLAP, stomp-stomp-CLAP). Instead, I became enamored with the music. The film’s opening number, “Somebody to Love”, spoke to me on a level never before reached. A pseudo-gospel number about longing for love set to the morning routine of film’s (momentarily) faceless protagonist. I spent the next month or so setting my morning routine to the song, to the lyrics chiseled into the tunnels through which my train of thought chugs mercilessly. It’s probably not really a song that anyone wants to admit speaks to them on a deeply personal level, which was probably one of the reasons my best friend at the time, let’s call him David, despised the song, but I don’t believe there are many souls out there who haven’t been to the place this song can take you to.

It was planned for the 5th of December. The band teacher (naturally) had planned the trip for her students, as well as, confusingly, one of the Phys. Ed teachers’ (there was a rumour that the two teachers had a thing between them—not that I would know anything about it). I was not part of either teacher’s classes that semester, but my sister was. She spoke to the band teacher about letting me go in her stead; it was a very brief event that ended up being a very pivotal moment in my life, even though I had virtually no control over it. David was also taking music that semester, so, together, along with about a hundred other students, we took a short bus ride to the local Cineplex. Winter had begun to creep in, and the frost started to bite. A partly cloudy day foreshadowed the sunless days to come. It would have been a very depressing day for us if the upside wasn’t being excused from 2nd and 3rd period to watch a movie.

The Cineplex was apparently closed for everyone outside of our field trip—God knows how or why. After they’d unlocked the doors for us, pulling us in from the chill and what sunlight we would be graced with that day, we stood awkwardly in the lobby, paying no heed to the mini arcade on our left or the ticket machines on our right (miraculously, the trip only cost us $5 per person along with our parents’ signatures), waiting to be drained into one of two theatres behind the arcade. They booted up the concessions in front of us and next to the hall of theatre entrances. Expectedly, there were lunatics who were willing to pay concession-stand prices for food (one of them being David, who I am ever so grateful for for sharing). Though known for being a refuge from scolding summer heat, the atmosphere in the theatre we were led into didn’t immediately relieve us from our shivering. We sat near the right wall and directly behind the horizontal aisle separating the comfortable, upper seating area from the “break your neck looking up at the screen” section below.

I don’t recall there being advertisements before the movie, only the 20th Century Fox logo accompanied by a special arrangement of the theme performed by none other than Queen’s remaining original members, drummer Roger Taylor and guitarist Brian May. Then, after some more logos, we were sent right into “Somebody to Love.”

I was hooked. From the opening sequence to every performance of Bohemian Rhapsody (my first time listening to it), capped off by the powerful Live Aid sequence, each musical moment led about an internal change that I had yet to experience the full effect of. They had taken us back to school a decent bit before third period had ended, meaning we had some extra time to ourselves. Still together, David and I headed to the public library just next to the building—pushing through wind and small, sharp bits of snow falling from above, the sun having left us entirely by this point—and borrowed the 2004 re-release of Queen’s Greatest Hits on CD.

David had a Spotify account but I didn’t, not until right before university. All through high school I relied heavily on CDs for offline listening, and, before I discovered I could buy them $1 a pop (now 50 cents) from the local Salvation Army almost exactly two years later, I depended on the municipal public libraries to get my fill.

Queen’s first greatest hits album is one of the best-selling albums of all-time (I’m pretty sure it’s still the best-selling album of all-time in the UK), and it’s not hard to see why. Including classics like “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “Another One Bites the Dust,” to stadium rockers everyone knows about like “We Will Rock You” and “We Are the Champions,” to sleeper hits that blew up later on like “Don’t Stop Me Now” (which, if I remember reading correctly, wasn’t technically a hit when the album was made), the album was and still is a quintessential piece of pop culture. Despite all the songs I just mentioned, the first song I listened to off the album, recognized, and had my “that’s a Queen song?” moment for was “You’re My Best Friend”, which I’d heard in a variety of pet store commercials on local satellite television (remember TV?).

However, being a re-release from 2004 (in support of the jukebox musical We Will Rock You), it included three additional tracks to incentivize buying the same album already released multiple times through the 80s and 90s: two live renditions (from and in support of Queen’s new live album, Queen on Fire — Live at the Bowl), one being of the live-staple “Tie Your Mother Down” and the other of the #1 single at the time of the original album’s release in “Under Pressure;” and the B-Side to Bohemian Rhapsody, I’m in Love with My Car (famously brought up and ribbed on multiple times in the movie).

(Quick couple notes on the embed above:
- “Tie Your Mother Down” missing from the Spotify album for some reason
- This version of “Under Pressure” was live at the Milton Keynes Bowl in 1982—a concert which they had just released also in 2004 and chose to promote through this compilation.)

I didn’t mind any of the additions, after all, the more Queen, the better, especially when they included another popular “that’s a Queen song?” in Under Pressure and—the apparently infamous—I’m in Love with My Car. However, re-releases can be hit or miss in very small, almost insignificant ways for some people. Though there wasn’t much to complain about in 2004’s re-release, Queen would begin the subsequent decade going even further in bringing themselves back into the limelight; for their 40th anniversary, Hollywood Records (the Disney-owned label that Queen switched to and initially reissued their discography on back in 1991) would introduce us to the infamous suffix “Remastered 2011.”

A Brief Lecture on Remastering Music

Stephen Bruel, a Sound and Music Production professor at the University of Lincoln and a part-time engineer at Midlife Crisis Records, has written surprisingly extensively on remastering music. Dr. Bruel, who earned a Bachelor’s in Economics before getting a Masters in Music and a Graduate Certificate in Journalism, has now become one of my heroes just for his pathway through education. I’ll be summarizing parts of his Doctorate thesis—“Nostalgia, authenticity and the culture and practice of remastering music”—for most of this section.

The initial mastering process ensures that all the individual sounds on a physical piece of media are in harmony with one another and that nothing sounds too loud or overwhelming when the final product reaches the consumer. Music is remastered simply for 1) modern media and 2) modern sound systems. The move from vinyl to CD and the rest of the ever-evolving sphere of sound technology demanded more care than a simple transfer of the original mastered recordings. Frequencies needed to be rebalanced, mistakes (or “mistakes”) needed to be erased; simply put, the music needed to continue to sound as best as it possibly could. An issue that gradually emerged with the initial shift from vinyl to CD was a “loudness war,” where sound dynamics were thrown out in favour of “immediate impact.”

Based on my personal understanding, remastering music usually involves a sum of these elements:

• Reprocessing the original tapes - finding the old, crusty analog tapes upon which the song was recorded on before digital recording became a mainstream thing in the late 80s and running them through some newer hardware.

• Digital remastering - Fixing up the song within a Digital Audio Workstation to put on CDs and streaming.

• Rerecording - just start over with some parts; record new instrumentation that doesn’t change too much from the original.

Another issue I’m willing to discuss came from the 2009 remasters of the Beatles’ entire discography that Bruel mentioned in his thesis as an example. My personal opinion of these remasters: awful. Addressing the issue more specifically, who did the panning on the stereo mixes? What lunatic puts all the vocals on the left and the instruments on the right? Why would anyone think the Beatles made cutting-edge music when 90% of their discography was mixed so lazily for modern ears? I read somewhere that the Beatles only ever heard their own music in the studio in mono up to Abbey Road, so why settle for any more than that? I did a run of the entire Beatles discography mixed back to mono (except for anything after “the White Album”) and finally heard what those obsessed music junkies were probably hearing all the way back then. The newest remasters done so lovingly by Giles Martin for the 50th anniversary releases are also miles better than whatever they thought was acceptable for release in the Beatles’ 2009 “Stereo Box Set.”

In all cases, remastering involves pulling apart the song and cleaning up (or straight-up replacing) its parts for some sort of improvement. Maybe they just make the overall sound louder or remove a glitch in the original recording that existed for some 40 years.

Mr. Bad Guy

I first reviewed this album when I started a modest 80-person Discord server for music back in mid-2020, near the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Though the album dropped in late-2019, the time I ultimately reviewed it in had been my “Summer of Mr. Bad Guy and No Jacket Required” (the latter being in part to a final project I had to do on Phil Collins’s biography), those two albums having been in constant rotation on Spotify desktop while I was getting a jump on my 12th-grade English credit through summer school.

Before I listened to the songs as they were on the special edition of Mr. Bad Guy, however, I’d listened to the original versions that one could salvage from it on streaming services through the 2006 Freddie Mercury compilation album Lover of Life, Singer of Songs — The Very Best of Freddie Mercury Solo (though multiple complete rips of the original 1985 Mr. Bad Guy CD were and still are available on YouTube.) I’d become accustomed to the extensive use of delay Freddie laid over his own vocals tracks like “Love Me Like There’s No Tomorrow,” the heavy compression on all the instruments to the point of invoking 8-bit music, and the sinking synths continuing a bit after the final horn in “I Was Born to Love You.”

I was thrilled to have the full album both available for streaming on my desktop and for purchase (again, I didn’t have a Spotify until the week before starting university). I was even happier to hear the crisp, polished sound of Freddie’s voice in front of vibrant instrumentals.

In a rant that I’ve long lost, having deleted the Discord server and not saving the review I’d written anywhere, I gave the album a glowing review but admonished some of the freedoms taken in retooling the album for a modern audience. This blog post intended to be an expansion of my initial comments, so with that in mind I figured I would be re-listening to both the original mixes and the remastered versions to provide more in-depth commentary on what I like and don’t like with what they’ve done to this wonderful album.

~

“Let’s Turn it On”

Aside from EQ changes, there isn’t much to write about here. It could have been that fault of directly placing the original mastered recording onto CD (a medium which, by 1985, had only been a couple years old) that the instruments were missing low-end and feeling a bit “thin.”

Also while were here, I wanna say this song is a bit funny to me in that Freddie frees himself from the Queen influence and decides to immediately show everyone his party side. How many of these did they reject outside of Hot Space, I wonder.

“Made in Heaven”

Man, that original snare was high, dry, and crunchy. The synths also have been beefed up though pushed further back in the mix. They added more reverb to a lot of these songs, which is a worthwhile change even though it would have you thinking that this album came out in 1985. Maybe they put too much reverb on Freddie, which is a curious edit considering what they’d done to his voice on other tracks in the album.

This was one of two songs that Queen pulled off this album to use as posthumous vocals on their final album Made in Heaven, remixed to include more heavy guitars. That version was my friend David’s favorite, though I could never get around how shrill they made his vocals sound when isolated and placed in front of classic Queen instrumentation.

“I Was Born to Love You”

They fixed Freddie’s choir and gave the synths so much more life that I felt it from the initial drop. However, this was one of the first noticeable instances of their removal of double tracking on Freddie’s voice to bring his raw voice front and center. Those changes were the primary issue I discussed when I first reviewed this album. Of course, you should try to present the best of a man who has long passed, but how much should you alter his work?

I’ll probably rant more about that at the end. See further above for my comment on the ending of this song. Also, this was the other song Queen took to add to Made in Heaven.

“Foolin’ Around”

So much compression on these synths. Admittedly, I like it. This was the crunchiest song on the original album and probably demanded the most modernizing of any other, but I have an irrational bias for the ‘80s so the more overblown that sound is the better. They also reduced the bass guitar in the new mix, which is a huge loss to me (again, bias). The new version is better sounding, objectively, but the old one was so much more danceable.

They also removed some more layered vocals at the end of the song and completely removed the final, belted line in the outro, which is also a huge loss. This is a massacre of a song that couldn’t get the single treatment. Maybe if it had any piano they would have left it alone.

“Your Kind of Lover”

A piano ballad that remains quite unchanged aside from the repositioning of instruments (that drum was loud, oh my God). There was a weird glitch in the middle with vocal panning that was fixed in the new mix, thankfully. They removed a lot of back and forth vocal panning in this album, sadly, but it was half committed to in the original mix of this song so they put rightfully put it dead in the middle.

This is probably my least favorite on the album, though it is very sweet.

“Mr. Bad Guy”

Not a good album for drums on the original CD. Quick tangent, I’m a bit surprised he didn’t use a drum machine given the greater focus on danceability in the album, but to each his own.

Of course, the title track wasn’t changed all that much, albeit the original mix didn’t use any double tracked vocals. The orchestra definitely shines more in the new mix.

“Man Made Paradise”

Piano and vocals brought up, drums moved back. Also, a phaser-like effect was removed from Freddie’s verse vocals. This track also suffered from the same vocal experiments that also weren’t fully realized on “Your Kind of Lover.”

The vocals and harmonies are far more natural sounding in the new mix. This might be the track that most benefit from the remaster.

“There Must Be More To Life Than This”

A failed Michael Jackson collaboration (at least until Queen got Jackson’s vocals from his estate and re-added them to this song in their 2014 compilation Forever) and an outtake from Queen’s The Works, which explains why this piano ballad sounds the most like a Queen song of any other track on this album by a long shot.

It might also explain why this song was changed the least in the new mix.

“Living On My Own”

This song saw the most success of any other on the album, but mainly through house-influenced remixes in the ‘90s (they somehow added more dance to the music). The 1993 remix got pretty big and even made it onto Queen’s Platinum Collection, which might also explain why they didn’t put much effort into changing this track up that much.

I do like this one more than the remix.

“My Love is Dangerous”

Another victim of reduced bass. They also took the reverb off of Freddie’s voice, which there was a ton of in the original mix. That mix was very new wave/reggae, and I think the poorer quality mix worked best for this track. The new mix does wonders in polishing up the track, but this track suffered even more than “Foolin’ Around” in the loss of a particular, unique sound. Even the guitars were punchier on the old mix.

“Love Me Like There’s No Tomorrow”

Severely reduced the reverb and multitracking off of Freddie’s voice so it again rang clearer next to the piano. They probably paid special care to do that here considering this was the single that promoted both this album and the new compilation, Never Boring, in 2019.

I did like the heavy reverb on this track, but I think they made the right call especially in consideration of prepping this track for promotional purposes.

~

When I reviewed this album in summer 2020, I gave it an 8.6/10 because I loved the album but couldn’t vibe with creative changes to a remaster (or “special edition”). My rating goes down not just because I noticed new flaws, but because I need to consider how it holds up as an album released in 2019. From that point of view, the remastering is phenomenal and it’s no surprise that the new single found some success. The synths are also adjusted to be less of relics and meet modern music where it’s at right now with how the instrument has been revived. However, the album aims most to please Freddie. Tracks like “Let’s Turn it On,” “Your Kind of Lover,” “Man Made Paradise,” and “My Love is Dangerous” are meticulously-crafted personal expressions that stand out the most as “not for everyone” songs, which is perfectly fine.

I loved the album growing up for being itself and showing me that I could be me and write songs that are me. This album grew on me for all the wacky stuff it tried and couldn’t accomplish at times. So much of the reverb, bass, and harmony that made the album so unique to the man was lost in the special edition, which again is what I wanted to discuss further in my initial review. The album sound is overall improved vastly, but much of its character has been drowned in the mix.

The clearest examples of how this album’s quality was both improved and diminished are through its album tracks (non-singles). “Your Kind of Lover” and “Man Made Paradise,” apparent filler tracks which seemed less cared for in the original recordings, are refined and finally accomplish what they set out to do without any glaring mistakes. Meanwhile, “Foolin’ Around” and “My Love is Dangerous” lose the sound that make them stand out and be unique in-between hard-hitting singles.

It’s not a perfect piece of ‘80s pop and it doesn’t stand the test of time, but it’s a self-portrait that deserves as much respect as much of the work Freddie finished alongside Queen. I also like it considerably just for being a second Hot Space (an incredible album, don’t @ me).

…or do @ me, please! As always, leave a comment saying anything. I like feedback and I would love to start a conversation about something random I blurb about on this blog. This was my second foray into proper music journalism (I’ll talk about my first foray eventually) and I hope I can continue doing just this. Where, when, and how? Who knows. In any case, please stick around for more and read the stuff I wrote over two years ago, it holds up quite well for me personally. I liked the random song lyric gimmick I had, I hope I can slip back into that easy enough.

I wish I could write here more, but when sunny skies break through behind the clouds of constant chores, they never last forever. I got exactly one year of undergrad left, though! Let’s see where it takes me.

- Max

P.S. my Salvation Army CD collection has grown quite large, but I’ve only ended up with a single Queen compilation (2009’s Absolute Greatest) even though I’ve collected huge discographies of other pop artists like Phil Collins and U2. I partly blame Queen’s discography being issued on CDs mainly in 1991 and 2011, two very different ends of CD history that would prevent those discs from being bought up and donated decades later to the Salvation Army. But who knows, I might see Made in Heaven one day.