In 1983 two of the biggest voices on earth stood in the same room. Michael Jackson was fresh off Thriller, the best selling album in history. Freddie Mercury was the frontman of Queen and was taking a break from the band to work on solo material. Jackson had been a Queen fan for years and had sat in the crowd at their Los Angeles shows. He proposed they record together. Freddie said yes.
They met at Jackson’s home studio at the family estate on Hayvenhurst Avenue in Encino, California, and worked on three songs. One was “There Must Be More to Life Than This.” One was “State of Shock.” One was called “Victory.” Then everything stopped. The tapes went into a vault and stayed there for decades while both men went on to become legends, and while both men died without ever hearing the songs released the way they intended.
Michael Jackson and Freddie Mercury, “There Must Be More to Life Than This”
The duet finally reached the public in 2014, thirty one years after it was cut, on the Queen compilation Queen Forever. Producer William Orbit assembled it, with Brian May and Roger Taylor adding new parts. Freddie had already put out a solo version of the song on his 1985 album Mr. Bad Guy, but hearing the two voices trade lines is a completely different experience. Michael is restrained and aching. Freddie is soaring. It is the sound of a partnership that almost was.
So why did it fall apart? The story fans repeat came from Queen’s manager Jim “Miami” Beach, who said in a 2012 documentary that Freddie called him in a panic and asked to be rescued because Michael kept bringing his pet llama, Louie, into the studio. Jo Burt, who played bass on Mr. Bad Guy, later backed it up and said Freddie took real offence to it. Some accounts name Michael’s chimp Bubbles instead. Others claim Michael was uncomfortable with Freddie’s drug use in his home. Brian May has never repeated any of it. His version is simply that they ran out of studio time and both men were too busy to book more.
Whatever ended it, the songs did not vanish. Michael took “State of Shock” and finished it with a different rock legend instead. Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones stepped into the part written for Freddie, and the track came out in 1984 on The Jacksons’ album Victory. It became a top ten hit in the United States and one of the biggest singles of that summer.
The Jacksons and Mick Jagger, “State of Shock”
Listen to it once and you can hear the Freddie shaped hole in it. The song is built for a huge operatic rock voice, and Jagger attacks it with everything he has, but the arrangement was never designed for him. It is a great record that is also a permanent reminder of a better one that never got made. The third song, “Victory,” has never been officially released at all. It is still sitting somewhere in an archive.
That is the part of the story worth holding onto. Michael Jackson sold hundreds of millions of records, won thirteen Grammy Awards, changed what a music video could be with “Thriller” and “Billie Jean,” and made Thriller the best selling album of all time. He did not need this collaboration. He wanted it. He chased it because he loved Freddie Mercury’s voice, and even the version of it we got, stitched together decades later by the men who knew Freddie best, is stunning. Sometimes the greatest artists leave behind their best work by accident.