22 August 1993
Our second posthumous Irish number one of 1993: however, I’m pretty sure that this wasn’t from the momentum of the 1992 Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert that has already given us two other Irish chart-toppers. If you don’t recall the original 1985 release of ‘Living On My Own’ you’re not alone; I only found about it just now, and I see it didn’t even crack the UK top fifty, which really puts our current-day Freddie-mania into perspective. This 1993 remix just seemed to pop up out of thin air, and suddenly it was everywhere. I was never a Queen fan and didn’t have a taste for this sort of make-’em-cheap, stack-’em-high house remix either: I hated this thing in 1993.
How do I feel about it now? Well, Freddie Mercury goes surprisingly well with a house record – not just his undeniable showmanship and innate flamboyance, but his strong, strident voice that asserts itself even over industrial BPMs. Still, though, ‘Living On My Own’ is trite and corny to a degree no voice or showmanship can surmount; you’ve lived a sheltered life if you find “Sometimes I feel I want to break down and cry!” to be any sort of fresh insight to the human condition. It’s not a particularly good house or dance record either. I also wonder if his gimmicky scatting over beats here was the enabler for Scatman John’s horrendous hit singles a few years later, which would be unforgivable moral culpability. Even away from the vastly overrated and irredeemably dreadful Queen, the verdict on this alternative Freddie Mercury record is: another one bites.
