Queen + Adam Lambert’s upcoming concert album Live Around The World comes out on October 2nd, but right now you can watch a preview of “I Was Born To Love You” from an August 2014 gig at the Summer Sonic festival in Osaka, Japan.
The song originally appeared on Freddie Mercury’s 1985 solo LP Mr. Bad Guy, but Queen made it their own 10 years later on Made In Heaven. “I had an obsession with the song and had the idea to make a new version, simulating how it would have sounded if we had been able to play it live with Freddie on stage,” Queen guitarist Brian May said in a statement. “So the Queen version was put together as a ‘virtual’ live track, using Freddie’s spectacular vocal as the central thread.”
“Roger [Taylor], John [Deacon] and I played our parts live,” he continued, “to a rearranged template I’d put together — complete with some additions to the arrangement, taking some liberties with the vocal, and even borrowing some choice Freddie ad-libs, to add to the feeling that it was a live band recording. Little did we know that years later we’d have the opportunity with Adam to finally bring this arrangement to life on a real stage.”
The 1995 Queen version didn’t make a big impression in America, but Japanese audiences embraced it after it appeared in a beer commercial and as the theme to a hit TV show. That inspired Queen + Adam Lambert to try it out on August 14th, 2014 at a show in Seoul, South Korea before playing it two days later at the Summer Sonic festival in Osaka, Japan. That’s the version included on Live Around The World.
“We all thought it was quite a difficult gig,” May said. “The audience was wonderful, but with the extreme heat and humidity, it was very difficult to play. However, when we saw the video, we all thought that it had great energy and the interaction with the crowd was great.”
Live Around The World draws from concerts Queen + Adam Lambert played all across the globe over the past six years. It mixes big hits like “Another One Bites the Dust” and “Somebody to Love” with lesser-known tunes like “Love Kills” and “Tear It Up.” It ends with their set at the 2020 Fire Fight Australia benefit gig where they recreated their legendary 1985 hits medley from Live Aid.
Queen + Adam Lambert were originally going to tour Europe this summer, but the pandemic forced them to put those plans on hold. They have rescheduled the dates for the summer of 2021.
