The greatest moments of Queen without Freddie Mercury
As anyone who’s been at a karaoke bar will tell you, Queen songs don’t really work without Freddie Mercury. The talismanic frontman had a genuinely once-in-a-generation voice. In the early days, it was elastic and expressive. In his late career, what he lost in range, he more than made up for in precision and power. Yet in 2025, Queen have actually been going on longer without Freddie Mercury than with him.
It’s a pretty insane statistic, but it’s true. Brian May and Roger Taylor’s sheer force of will to keep Freddie’s legacy alive has seen them team up with a few different singers to keep the Queen show on the road. They know more than anyone that nothing they do will better or even match what they achieved with the man born Farrokh Bulsara, but they’ve come close a few times.
After all, the whole idea of a new singer being able to step into the continent-sized shoes of Mercury came from one of the great live music moments of the 1990s. George Michael’s absolutely titanic version of ‘Somebody to Love’ at the Freddie Mercury tribute concert is a legitimately jaw-dropping moment of majesty that holds up to this day.
It would have to be; after all, it convinced the world that Queen could conceivably continue without Freddie Mercury, which was akin to convincing the world that Neil Young and Crazy Horse could continue playing live without the former. The Wham! frontman’s gospel choir-backed mastery set the standard, but there have been a few moments that bettered even that incredible moment.
What other Queen moment matched their work with Freddie Mercury?
Over two decades later, another gay icon fronted the group, with Adam Lambert doing the honours. The American Idol winner was an ideal fit for the group, especially when compared to their first full-time vocalist after Mercury, the baffling choice of Free and Bad Company howler Paul Rodgers.
Fittingly for a man who auditioned for the music reality show with a rendition of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, Lambert understood the assignment. A cursory look through his time with May and Taylor shows a few standouts, but one that really springs to mind is his powerful take on ‘Who Wants to Live Forever’ at the 2016 Isle of Wight Festival.
The night previously, a gunman had taken the lives of 49 people at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida. Lambert, clearly and understandably shaken by the tragedy, dedicated the song to those 49 lives, along with “anybody that has been a victim of senseless violence or hatred”. What followed was a performance just as moving as Michael’s performance was joyous.
The song is already a powerful one about accepting that committing yourself to someone means seeing them age and eventually die. In Lambert’s hands, the grief he feels for his community for a tragedy barely 24 hours old, the song goes past sadness into sheer rage. Especially when he roars the lines, “Who dares to love forever / When love must die?”
It’s an astonishing performance. One that, in that moment, justifies the entire business of keeping Queen on the road. After all, Freddie’s is the kind of voice that will echo through history no matter who sings his words.
