Editor’s note: This piece contains strong language and references to sex, drugs, and rock and roll.
Freddie Mercury is a modern myth, a legend, and a titan.
It’s been 32 years after his death, and his name still carries a certain resonance — a loud whisper of greatness, creativity, and daring.
Mercury is revered across virtually all cultures for his exploits as the frontman for the iconic band Queen. As one YouTube commenter said:
“Freddie Mercury is the only guy who can steal your heart, your boyfriend … and your girlfriend too.” -@carinablue8510
Putting the longevity of Queen’s discography as a whole aside, Mercury’s own hand in that discography stands the test of time. “We Are The Champions” still echoes around sports stadiums, “Don’t Stop Me Now” blares from speeding cars on the highway, and comments written in all languages trickle in on the YouTube page for “Bohemian Rhapsody.”
Much has been said about Freddie Mercury in popular culture. His genius. His showmanship. His hedonism. This long form article aims to portray Freddie Mercury from a different angle by looking at what our world lost with his passing, and what we lack today in terms of male role models.
The current state of the heroic male role model is in utter shambles. This isn’t due to a lack of real heroes existing in the world — good people still exist and do extraordinary actions in both small and large ways. Ordinary samaritans serve the homeless, first responders save children, and Ukrainian soldiers blow themselves up to stop Russian advances.
However, men in developed countries are facing crucial challenges and our social media “heroes” that have stepped up to guide them are simply horrible. Today, men make up 80% of suicides, are suffering from crippling social isolation, and are increasingly dropping out of college and the labor force.
And yet, one of the few who can reach them, Andrew Tate, is at once an illiberal materialistic misogynist standing trial in Romania for sex trafficking and an almost beat for beat copy of a chauvinist caricature troll on the Dr. Phil show who said “men are better than women” more than a decade ago.
Many leftists have asked the question: Why is there no Andrew Tate on the left? Why are men struggling?
The reason is beyond partisanship. The short answer is that men today lack the external purposes that drove men of the past; love, community, home ownership, and war. The vestiges of extreme traditional masculinity, such as excessive emotional repression, have compounded to create a situation where men feel they cannot reach out for help.
But more than the lack of these external purposes, men lack the deepest internal driver a human being can have: captivating heroes who can teach us how to live a great story.
The main thing we can change in the face of adversity is our state of mind. As Viktor Frankl, the famous Austrian Holocaust survivor and psychologist said in “Man’s Search for Meaning:”
“Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you become the plaything to circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity …”
Heroes and stories are key to cultivating our inner freedom because they provide a compelling narrative that strikes our emotional core. Freddie Mercury is one hero who can guide young men, regardless of their sexuality, to live better lives. Of course, Freddie is for everyone — men, women, straight, and gay. But his life and story are particularly applicable to how we view masculinity today.
Many discuss Freddie Mercury’s sexuality — how he liked men quite a bit — as if that alone would preclude him from being someone that heterosexual men could look up to for guidance on how to face life. Regardless of whom you sleep with, the virtues of heroism can be accessed by all. As Uncle Iroh said to Zuko in “Avatar the Last Airbender”:
“It is important to draw wisdom from many different places. If you take it only from one place, it grows rigid and stale.”
The plaque on Mercury’s famous Montreux statue reads, “Lover of life, Singer of Songs.” Freddie lived courageously, lived kindly, and lived big. He had his faults, as we will discuss, but his virtues far outweighed his vices.
Here is the case — the manifesto — for how we can better masculinity by learning from the life and story of Freddie Mercury. We will cover the virtues and lessons of the frontman — the importance of being strong, kind, spontaneous, irreverent, and going for true love. In addition, I have written a separate brief debunking of the lies that the “Bohemian Rhapsody” movie spread about Mercury and how they inaccurately represented his character.
Be Strong
“Pull yourself together, cause you know you should do better. That’s because you’re a free man.” – “Spread Your Wings”
At the beginning, Freddie Mercury was a mish-mash of things and a definite loner.
His real name was Farrokh Bulsara and he was a Parsi, themselves an unrooted people who had fled Iran from Muslim persecution and settled in India.
Mercury was born in Zanzibar to Zoroastrian parents, but was sent to a Catholic boarding school in Bombay, India. When a violent revolution broke out, he and his family fled Zanzibar and went to London, England.
Geographically and culturally, Freddie was disoriented — his identity fractured by constant moving and never belonging. No matter where he went, Freddie didn’t fit in — even while at boarding school, classmates remember him as a loner who was his happiest when playing the piano.
Freddie could also be incredibly sensitive and insecure about his appearance. Bullied as a child for his overbite and buck teeth, young Freddie would obsess over his looks and thought he was ugly.
Despite this, Mercury exemplified great strength in the arena of physical beauty: he never changed his teeth even when he had the money to do so, because he believed, perhaps wrongly, that they played a role in his amazing voice. In other words, he chose to prioritize deeper beauty over superficial beauty.
In the ‘80s when audiences responded negatively to his famous gay trucker mustache by throwing razors on stage, he said: “A lot of people are hating it — I don’t give a fuck, actually … it’s my mustache and I’m gonna keep it!”
It is a myth that Freddie Mercury was always a great singer; he started off raw and had to fight hard to earn his voice. Roger Taylor, Queen’s drummer, said that he almost laughed after hearing Freddie sing for a tryout. His old band mates from Ibex noted that Freddie’s pitching was “awful” in the beginning, as reflected in their live performance.
Even some of the early raw session recordings of Queen reveal that Mercury was still trying to find his voice. In ‘Ogre Battle,” “Son and Daughter,” “White Queen,” and “Nevermore,” one can hear the gem of beauty in his voice, but also the imperfection and instability.
Freddie was not a technically perfect singer, especially live. Steve Perry could hit high notes with proper technique more consistently, not to mention greats in other genres such as Aretha Franklin (whom Freddie idolized and modeled “Somebody to Love” after), Ella Fitzgerald, Whitney Houston, and Pavarotti. It’s sacrilegious to say, but Adam Lambert today is a more technically proficient singer than Mercury, although Freddie was undeniably a far greater performer and artist in sum.
Nonetheless, Freddie made his voice his own. It has the crisp nasality of Robert Plant, an elegant flightiness in head voice, a bell-like tone in chest voice, and a gripping raspiness when he wants to get aggressive. It is versatile, capable of crooning a soothing lullaby, a heated gay sex song, and a falsetto-laden self help piece.
It may not be flawless, but the sound is the most emotive, passionate voice I’ve ever heard. So unique is his voice that Freddie Mercury AI covers continue to be made from beyond the grave and (if I may say so) absolutely slap (Let It Go, Winner Takes it All, All I Want For Christmas).
Mercury was also an incessant worker and physically active throughout his life. Tween Mercury was a terrific athlete — a runner and a star boxer at his boarding school. According to a classmate at the time:
“I remember a boxing match where Freddie was really getting hammered in the ring, and we all kept telling him to concede the fight. But, no. Freddie insisted on fighting on till the end, with blood all over his face. He could be very tenacious.”
Freddie was indeed phenomenally perseverant — he once stated in an interview:
“If I’m not happy, then I work out why I’m unhappy … and I go and conquer that … In a funny way I like obstacles cause there’s … a challenge. If there’s a challenge put in front of me, I’ll conquer it. That’s the way I see myself.”
As a young man, Freddie attended art school for design (he even designed the Queen logo), wrote songs in his free time, and worked as a baggage handler at Heathrow Airport on weekends. He was busy and frenetic, hopping from one type of work to another.
Freddie was also a bit of a badass.
Later in Queen’s career, Sid Vicious from the Sex Pistols would pay a visit in person to the band while they were recording their famed 1977 “News of The World’ album. Punk was seemingly overthrowing rock at the time, and the sun of the monarchic Queen appeared to be setting. Vicious was arrogant; he confronted Mercury and asked if he had “succeeded in bringing ballet to the masses.”
“Ah, Mr. Ferocious! We’re trying dear,” Freddie replied.
Mercury then walked up to Vicious, flicked his lapels, and pushed him out the door.
Vicious was no pushover — he once beat a music journalist with a bike chain for criticizing his band and was even accused of murdering his own girlfriend. Nonetheless, it seems that Mercury’s sharp wit and old boxing training was enough to handle the punk rocker. Queen’s “News of the World” album, which featured the hit duo “We Will Rock You” and “We are the Champions,” further cemented Mercury’s victory over Vicious.
Freddie’s badassery continued throughout his life. He boldly stopped a fight at a Queen concert at Slane Castle in 1986. Two drunk audience members started brawling at the very beginning of “Tie Your Mother Down.” An impassioned Mercury stopped the song and implored the deviants to “stop this shit” and “calm down.” He urged the crowd to move back before asking if the brawlers were alright. Mercury then regained control of the audience by performing his signature “Ay oh” call and response routine.
In 1982, four years earlier, there was yet another case of Mercury stopping a fight at a Queen concert in Germany. Similarly, Mercury used his vocal improv to soothe the tension and stop the violence. “Listen to the music and no fighting,” he told the crowd.
But Freddie’s greatest show of strength came towards the very end of his life.
Mercury was diagnosed with AIDS in 1987. The disease was ravaging the gay community and the public was in full pandemonium over a sickness that was essentially a death sentence if contracted. Mercury was placed on AZT, a rudimentary HIV drug, but the disease had already progressed far beyond the capacity for effective treatment at the time.
The physical challenges that Mercury faced towards the end cannot be understated.
AIDS/HIV is a virus which causes the human body to attack itself. Patients suffered horribly from diseases that they couldn’t fight against due to their weakened immune system; Freddie himself died of AIDS related pneumonia in 1991.
Over the last years of his life, Mercury dealt with kaposi sarcoma — horrible lesions that grew on his face and body. He suffered from headaches, vomiting, nausea, and insomnia. As the disease progressed, Mercury fought AIDS related dementia and was losing his sight.
In addition, Mercury faced a hostile press and society. Because Mercury never publicly revealed that he had AIDS until a day before he died, the British media followed him around and speculated on his private matters. Homosexuality was frowned upon socially; right after Mercury succumbed, columnist Joe Haines wrote an infamously homophobic article blaming Freddie for his own death.
Nevertheless, Freddie responded to the hatred and physical pain in heroic style.
He was stoic, never complaining about the shortened and painful life he would have to live. At the same time, Mercury did not give into toxic stoicism – he allowed his husband and a close circle of friends to help him in his final days.
Mercury also turned his suffering into art. In the “I Want it All” music video, Freddie sported a beard to hide the scars from the sarcoma. He wrote a song called “I’m Going Slightly Mad” about his dementia, joking around with Roger Taylor and a defecating penguin during the filming of their music video. He and Brian May penned “Scandal”, lambasting the indecency of the British press.
Then there is the famous story behind the song, “The Show Must Go On.”
By the time it was written and recorded in 1990, Freddie’s health was deteriorating rapidly. Brian May, Queen’s guitarist, was unsure that Freddie would be able to sing the song because it featured incredibly high and powerful notes.
Mercury’s response to Brian?
He downed a couple shots of vodkas and said, “I’ll fucking do that. Don’t worry.”
In only a couple takes, Mercury recorded some of the most powerful and soul-wrenching vocals ever made. In spite of his physical condition, Mercury still miraculously held onto his voice, and he used it to its extremes, belting C5s and E5s with electric passion as though it was the last time he would ever sing.
In doing so, Mercury transformed “The Show Must Go On” into a testament to the human spirit. The lyrics give us hope that even in our darkest times, we can use all that we have left to turn our suffering into beauty — to cry out and dance our last dance before death.
“Empty spaces, what are we living for?
Abandoned places, I guess we know the score
On and on, does anybody know what we are living for?
…
The show must go on!
Inside my heart is breaking, my makeup may be flaking but my smile, still stays on
…
Whatever happens, I leave it all to chance
Another heartache, another failed romance
On and on, does anybody know what we are living for?
…
Outside the dawn is breaking, but inside in the dark I’m aching to be free
…
My soul is painted like the wings of butterflies
Fairytales of yesterday will grow but never die
I can fly my friends!
…
The show must go on!
I’ll face it with a grin!
I’m never giving in
Oh, with the show!
…
I’ll top the bill
I’ll overkill
I have to find the will to carry on
With the show!”
I’ve read countless stories of great heroes who faced death and hardship in brave ways, whether they be soldiers, activists, or statesmen. And yet, the way that Freddie Mercury faced death is personally the most inspiring for me.
The circumstances of Mercury’s death reflect the human condition. The viewpoint that human existence itself is a disease, a curse, or a form of suffering can be found in existentialist and Buddhist thought.
Despite this, we are all born as musical creatures. Most human beings have an innate sense of rhythm and intonation from a very early age. Music moves us deeply— it makes us fearful, sad, and angry, but also joyful, brave, and loving.
Freddie faced a disease that destroyed his mind and body through sheer misfortune; the 70s were an era where everyone — straight and gay — fucked a lot. Once he had contracted AIDS, there was nothing he could do to stop the curse. There was no cure to be taken, no shortcut, no easy way out. All Freddie Mercury could do was face the pain as a lover of life and singer of songs.
In the end, Mercury lived a life of strength. No matter the obstacles he faced, he found a way to push through without lashing out at others. He had an iron will to be himself no matter what others thought, and he directed this will to creating songs that will put smiles on millions of faces for the millennia to come.
Ultimately, Freddie’s example serves as a guide for men today on how to truly be strong: Get your shit together, be bold, be a lover, and create a life of beautiful art.
Be Kind
“Love dares you to care for the people on the edge of the night.” – Under Pressure
Many picture Mercury as a hedonist. A diva. A boastful strutting peacock.
Those descriptors are all true, in part, but they do not capture the full Freddie Mercury. Mercury was, at heart, an incredibly kind person who cared deeply for other people.
Today there is a perception amongst the right that men need to be overly aggressive and emotionally stoic. On the left, there is a view that men need to be overly conscious of their “male toxicity” and keep their pride in check.
Mercury’s kindness is an antidote to the cruelty of right wing conceptions of masculinity — and yet, it does not give into the castration that leftist “masculinity” imposes on men.
As a lady who ran a photography business once told me, “Being kind is not the same as being nice.”
Kindness is a deeper emotion of genuine care for another person that also incorporates a degree of strength. One still maintains their boundaries and is not a slave to the whims of other people’s opinions and wants. Freddie Mercury was an exceptionally strong and resilient person. His acts of compassion were acts of kindness — not mere attempts to please other people or win validation.
For example, while Freddie famously spent lavishly on art and bitching parties, he also gave considerable time and money to those he cared about.
According to Peter Freestone, a close friend of Freddie, Mercury would invite friends that were alone or didn’t have family to Christmas at his home where they would have a large holiday feast. He would also pay for the Christmas meals of people suffering from AIDS in the hospital. Freddie, who famously adored cats, also adopted several from shelters and animal hospitals to save their lives.
Mercury was also the godfather of producer Reinhold Mack’s son, who was named Freddie in his honor.
When the child was born, the elder Fred sent a special gift to Mack and his wife, Ingrid. “Freddie wanted to send some flowers and his aide called from the florist and said, ‘What should I get?’” Mack remembers. “Freddie said, ‘For fuck’s sake, just buy the entire store!’
By all accounts, Freddie was kind to the Mack children:
Mercury would share a bond [with] all three of Mack’s children for the rest of his life, leaving them notes reading, “Just go for it — my love is with you always,” and other handwritten messages. “He would swim in the pool and play table tennis with the kids,” says Mack. “Many times they went shopping with him.” Often they had movie nights with the Macks and Freddie curled up on the couch with hot cocoa. “The nicest thing was when he said, ‘Oh, this was actually like in a real family.’ – People
Mercury was especially sweet to the children in his life. There’s footage of Freddie, only a year before his death, doting on his ex-girlfriend Mary Austin’s newborn infant. In “The Miracle” music video, Queen had children dress up as the band members. Near the end of the video, the real members of Queen emerged and paired up with their child counterparts to finish off the song. It’s adorable to see Freddie Mercury side-hug little Freddie for a brief moment in the video.
In addition, Elton John and Freddie Mercury shared a close friendship.
Elton tearfully recounted a moving story about a beautiful gesture of friendship that Mercury made as he was dying. Mercury was an avid collector of Japanese paintings — even as he was bedridden, he was still buying art via auction catalogs. On Christmas, Freddie, whose drag name was Melina, decided to give Elton (drag name Sharon) a gift. As the Daily Mirror reported:
“Elton opened his front door to find a friend [carrying] a gift from Freddie wrapped in a pillowcase. It was a painting by Henry Scott Tuke, one of the Candle In The Wind singer’s favourite artists, and was accompanied with a heartbreaking note.
It read: ‘Dear Sharon, I thought you’d like this. Love, Melina. Happy Christmas.’
Elton admitted he was overcome with emotion and started ‘crying like a child.’ He said: ‘By all rights, Freddie should have spent those final days concerned only with his own comfort. But that wasn’t who he was. He truly lived for others.’”
Overall, Freddie was exceptionally generous to those he had a close personal bond — but he and Queen were also unbelievably kind to their fans.
For Freddie, music was not just a means to express himself; it was also an act of service.
“I love the fact that I can make people happy, in any form. Even if it’s just an hour of their lives, if I can make them feel lucky or make them feel good, or bring a smile to a sour face, that to me is worthwhile.” –Freddie Mercury
According to Gary Numan from The Cars, who knew Freddie Mercury personally, Queen was dedicated to their fans.
“Other bands would always rush past to their limos and ignore everybody, ” [Numan] said, “but Queen were different. They invited everybody up to their dressing room, chatted to everybody and signed everything. It was a lesson in how to treat those who support you – I’ve always tried to emulate that wherever possible.”
Freddie and Queen were also considerate to their fans in terms of the songs they decided to write and perform:
Brian May wrote “Teo Torriatte” — a song with Japanese lyrics for Queen’s die hard following in Japan. “If You Can’t Beat Them” reached out to those left out on the margins of life. “Keep Passing the Open Windows” served as an anti-suicide song from Queen’s 1984 The Works album. “Pain Is So Close to Pleasure” aimed to comfort romantically disheartened fans.
And then there were Queen’s live performances.
Queen’s famous live renditions of “Love of My Life” encouraged crowd participation as whole soccer stadiums collectively sang a song about heartbreak.
In the 1986 Budapest, Hungary concert, Queen became one of the few Western bands to perform in the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War. Freddie Mercury and Queen specially performed Tavaszi Szel, a Hungarian love folk song that children learn in school, to raucous applause from the audience.
Towards the end of Freddie’s life, Queen’s songs seemed to reach out all the more to their fans. “Don’t Try So Hard,” and “The Show Must Go On” spoke directly to the audience and urged them to pursue lives of meaning.
“These Are the Days of Our Lives,” a Roger Taylor song from Innuendo, sticks out in particular. The music video was filmed in 1991 six months prior to Freddie’s death. Mercury looks like a skeleton — his face is caked in makeup to hide the scars from AIDS — and he is physically a shadow of the Greek god who dominated Wembley at Live Aid just four years earlier. But in his eyes there is still a spark of human greatness that cannot be taken away.
“These Are the Days of Our Lives” is a song about Taylor’s thoughts on life and seeing his children grow up, but it took on a special message for Freddie because he was on death’s doorstep.
Although Freddie does his best throughout the video to move naturally, smile, and give some energy to his performance, he is clearly not the same as he used to be. At the end of the video, Freddie smiles and looks straight at the camera for one last time before saying, “I still love you.”
He holds frame for a few seconds and then walks off camera, allowing his fans to absorb his goodbye. In doing so, Mercury provided a snapshot — a memory — for people today to hold onto when they need reassurance that someone out there cares about them.
“Just go for it — my love is with you always.”
Freddie left these words in a written message to the Mack children. And similarly, through his music, he left those same words for everyone to hear around the world.
___
In short, Freddie Mercury displays the importance of being kind to others — of serving others for their own sake — whether that be on the level of friends or society.
Masculinity is not about taking — it is about giving. Emotionality, sentimentality, and being open are key features of being a complete man and human being. These traits do not run counter to the virtue of being strong — they enhance it just as they enhance the flavor of life itself.
Strength and kindness hold each other in a tight grip, and Mercury’s story displays the importance of wielding both at the same time.
Just as Mercury wielded undying stoicism and generosity in his last years — just as he wielded masculinity and femininity together as tools for artistic performance on stage — the capacity to both take and give rests with us all.
Being kind requires being willing to be vulnerable, which in itself requires strength. The virtues of life all swim together in the same pond, and each is worthless without the other.
Masculinity is nothing without femininity — to have one, you have to have the other.
Be Irreverent
“My apologies, but I say what I want. You know what I mean?” – Freddie Mercury, Wembley 1986
The art of irreverence means confidently saying “fuck you” to the rules.
It is an instrumental part of living an exciting and purposeful life. As Chris Stevens from “Northern Exposure” said:
“Sometimes you have to do something bad just to know you’re alive.”
All Freddie Mercury and Queen did was break the rules.
Queen famously flouted gender norms in their “I Want to Break Free” music video, in which all of the band members dressed as women from the British show Coronation Street. The drag was actually not Mercury’s idea, but the other band members. Nevertheless, Mercury’s look would become iconic. He would reprise drag in his music video for “The Great Pretender,” which also featured the beautiful Rogerina Taylor.
While Britain understood the humor of “I Want to Break Free,” America did not. The song and music video were not well received, in part due to the public’s negative attitudes to homosexuality.
Live performances of “I Want to Break Free” in other countries also did not go too well. During Queen’s Rock in Rio concert of 1985, a Brazilian crowd of 350,000 “began tossing stones, beer cans and other missiles” at Mercury when he donned his drag for the song.
Nevertheless, Queen kept going with creating and performing music — irreverence was their identity. As Mercury once said when discussing the unique style of the band’s music:
“For us to start pandering to people’s tastes now, saying this is what they want so give it to them, would be such a backlash. So we’re going to do things against the grain, against people’s ideas of whatever they like or expect us to do. We’re not afraid of the fact that we’re doing those things. We don’t jump on bandwagons or do whatever is modern. No, we do it with the Queen stamp on everything”. –Freddie Mercury
In addition to challenging gender norms, Mercury was also quite irreverent with regards to whom he pursued in love.
There is a great deal of debate about whether Mercury was gay or bisexual, since he never publicly identified his sexuality — only referring to it sarcastically from time to time in interviews.
Regardless of Freddie’s precise sexual identity, it’s undeniable that he loved men quite a bit. In spite of Mercury’s understandable reticence to fully come out, he was by no means fully closeted. In the “Don’t Stop Me Now” music video, Freddie wore a shirt from the New York gay club Mineshaft — a clear identifier of his sexual preferences. He was also uncompromisingly honest about his sexual appetite in interviews:
Interviewer: “Do you have any hobbies?”
Freddie Mercury: “I don’t have any time. Yeah, a lot of sex. Try to get out of that one.”
It’s also undeniable that society at the time was unaccepting of homosexuality. During the AIDS epidemic, journalists wrote scathing articles about gay people and called the disease the “gay plague.” In the immediate aftermath of his death, fellow Queen members Roger Taylor and Brian May had to go on live TV to defend Freddie and quell the homophobic attacks against the frontman.
Mercury’s willingness to push the line with both gender norms and his sexuality at a time of social disapproval is a sign of deep courage and irreverence. Today, he would be canceled by the right for promoting drag, homosexuality, and “degeneracy.”
At the same time, Mercury was also irreverent in ways that would get him in trouble with leftists today; Mr. Fahrenheit was more than willing to say and do things that were offensive or “politically incorrect.”
As showcased in this video compilation, Freddie Mercury was the absolute king of sexual innuendos, witty digs, adorable banter, edgy jokes, and curse words. In live performances, he had no qualms about dedicating Brian May’s song, “Fat Bottomed Girls,” to all the “beauties with great big tits.”
Then there is the infamous 1981 Puebla concert.
In what would be Queen’s only stop in Mexico, the crowd at their first concert threw bottles, shoes, and other objects at the band. There is even a photo of Freddie and Roger holding up a massive bolt that was thrown onstage.
Freddie was livid; he closed the show by sarcastically thanking the crowd for the shoes and saying “Adios amigos, you motherfuckers — you bunch of tacos.”
There are several different accounts as to why the crowd at Puebla became incensed at Queen that day. One account is that Freddie Mercury’s decision to wear a stereotypically massive sombrero at one point enraged the crowd.
Other accounts suggest that Mercury’s sombrero was actually not the inciting incident that riled up the crowd. Instead, some suggest that poor management on the part of authorities led to crowding and general mayhem. Segments of the crowd were also drunk or high on drugs, which contributed to the frenzy. Regardless of the reason for the crowd’s anger, Freddie and Queen never set foot in Mexico again.
To be clear, irreverence has its limits. There are times when the desire to go against the grain leads one to commit moral errors that should be avoided.
For instance, Freddie and Queen made a mistake by choosing to perform in South Africa while most other artists were boycotting apartheid. Queen were not an inherently political band, and their perspective was that the band should play music for people wherever possible. Although Queen played in front of a racially integrated audience, it was still a mistake – as acknowledged by Roger Taylor – to perform at a time when as much public pressure was needed to crack apartheid.
However, it is natural to commit errors while being irreverent. No one is perfect — and the imperfections of those in any kind of spotlight will always be hopelessly magnified and criticized. As Teddy Roosevelt famously said in his 1910 speech at Sorbonne, Paris:
“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better.”
The key to irreverence is to be willing to say how you feel, to make mistakes, to be offensive. This is because doing so makes us take a stand. Irreverence requires a certain degree of civil disobedience — you have to be willing to accept backlash, whether justified or unjustified, to what you say or do without lashing out in defense.
Irreverence, strength, and kindness all serve as checks and balances for each other to make sure that . Nevertheless, it’s good to cut loose a little and express oneself, even if doing so means you’ll get in a bit of trouble.
“I’m not afraid to speak out, and say things that I want to do, or do the things that I want to do. I think in the end, being natural, and being actually genuine is what wins.” –Freddie Mercury
Be spontaneous
“If it’s planned, then it’s boring.” –Freddie Mercury
Spontaneity is the key to creativity.
It involves feeling things intuitively, making snap decisions, and not overthinking things. The ability to tap into one’s free flowing intuition and avoid excessive planning is not just essential for making good art — it’s essential to living a wonderful life.
We live in an age of endless information and endless ways to store, dissect, and categorize that data.
Most people have packed schedules that are dictated by the colored boxes of our Google calendars. Our online shopping habits yield predictive information that companies use to advertise the next product to us. We obsess over statistics and data insights in all facets of life — from jobs to dating to the food we eat.
In many ways, we have become myopic and less spontaneous — less willing to take risks and be creative with our lives. As Chaplin said in “The Great Dictator:”
“We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity; more than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.”
The way Mercury approached his music is, in many ways, the way he approached his life; his creative process for writing music was incredibly spontaneous and relied heavily on his intuition. Freddie despised formulaic processes and algorithms for generating artwork, and he was skeptical of goals:
“If there were a book of rules, everybody would buy it and everyone would be churning out the same old trash.” –Freddie Mercury
“I don’t get up every morning and think, what’s my ultimate goal for today? I’m just Freddie Mercury, I’m me. I just want to do things that come naturally.” –Freddie Mercury
Freddie’s method for song creation played on the idea of listening to one’s inner “resistance.” Every artist encounters a kind of mental block that tells them to stop creating or shift gears to a new project — their “resistance.” Rather than fighting through this internal struggle and forging music against this will, Mercury listened to it.
He viewed “resistance” as a sign that he needed to move onto a new project because the current one just wasn’t working. In other words, “resistance” became an indicator that a song idea was not able to intuitively touch the human soul — that the song was probably too complex to be consumed meaningfully.
Mercury wrote songs that had an underlying simplicity, resonance, and emotionality — even if they sounded convoluted. His songs needed to be able to reach people at a deep level; this was only possible if the bare-bones notes and structure of the music was accessible at a first listen.
When an idea came to Mercury, it needed to be written down immediately wherever he was. The song had to resonate immediately — otherwise, Mercury would simply let the idea rest and wait for the next idea to pop into his head. It’s no surprise, given this process, that Mercury wrote “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” in ten minutes while taking a bath. He also wrote “Killer Queen” in the span of a weekend.
Additionally, Mercury found inspiration for his music in unlikely places. For example, Freddie wrote a song about a bizarrely beautiful 19th century painting by Richard Dadd. “The Fairy Feller’s Masterstroke” — from Queen’s second album — contains creatively medieval language that is great for vocabulary building:
“Ploughman, ‘waggoner will’ and types
Politician with senatorial pipe, he’s a dilly-dally-o
Pedagogue squinting, wears a frown
And a satyr peers under lady’s gown, dirty fellow
What a dirty laddio
Tatterdemalion and the junketer
There’s a thief and a dragonfly trumpeter, he’s my hero
Fairy dandy tickling the fancy of his lady friend
The nymph in yellow (can we see the master stroke)
What a quaere fellow”
The fruits of Mercury’s spontaneity are clear to see. In Queen’s 1974 Sheer Heart Attack album, Mercury contributed five songs from completely different genres:
- “Killer Queen:” a vaudeville show tune
- “Bring Back that Leroy Brown:” a ‘20s jingle
- “Lily of the Valley:” a fantasy love song
- “Stone Cold Crazy:” a thrash metal predecessor
Mercury’s spontaneous process also generated several unique songs that were really pastiches of multiple smaller songs.
The most famous of these was “Bohemian Rhapsody,” which was essentially a ballad, opera, and rock section mashed together. Less well known, but still incredibly beautiful, are Mercury’s “Millionaire Waltz” and “March of the Black Queen.” Few artists have created such “multi-song songs” as Freddie Mercury— and none have created anything comparable in scope, execution, and distinctness as “Bohemian Rhapsody.”
To this day, “virgin” listeners of “Bohemian Rhapsody” experience absolute ecstasy in their first time hearing it. The song is so captivating that 42 years after its release, the audience of a Green Day concert joined in unison to sing it prior to the start of the show.
In short, Mercury’s spontaneity in music teaches us the importance of letting go of reason and giving into intuition.
Today, our culture places too much stock in numbers and data. The meme of “facts don’t care about your feelings” engenders a soulless attitude to life. Indeed, it is often the case that the “feeler,” as opposed to the “thinker,” actually gets stuff done. Emotions and intuition exist for a reason — to shun them is to disgrace the deepest parts of what makes us human.
Moreover, formulaic and excessively number driven approaches to life fall into the trap of complexity. While spontaneity lends itself to simplicity in the creative process, overthinking creates more problems. As writer Nassim Taleb notes in “Black Swan,” a book about the impacts of extreme human events in areas such as finance:
“You have to avoid optimization. That is quite critical for someone who is doing finance to understand because it goes counter to everything you learn in portfolio theory. … I have always been very skeptical of any form of optimization. In the black swan world, optimization isn’t possible. The best you can achieve is a reduction in fragility and greater robustness.”
Freddie puts Taleb’s idea into more accessible language:
“About ten years ago, I knew three chords on the guitar. Now, in 1982, I know three chords on the guitar.” –Freddie Mercury
Of course, using reason and having goals are essential to life. But they can also become a hindrance that prevents one from achieving happiness. Being fluid is important in life; having goals or rules that are too unyielding will suck the joy out of life.
Freddie’s focus on simplicity in music-making is an antidote to the over-optimization modern people engage in in all aspects of our lives.
Men today seem to suffer from a world that has lost its drive to really live. Positive spontaneity and creativity are rare to find in music, the daily grind, and the people you meet on the street. A quiet desperation permeates our society. There is a sense that there must be more to life than what we have now. A desire to live beyond what life is today.
Some men give into a dark side of spontaneity — the drive towards destruction. The phenomenon of young male shooters, be they Neo-Nazis or incels, is a horrifying societal trend.
But Mercury gives us hope in the light side of spontaneity — the drive to pursue and create beauty. Everyone is born with some innate musical ability. More than that, everyone has the capacity to transform their lives — their joy, dreams, pain, and suffering — into their own art.
Freddie Mercury lived a life of spontaneity that came with its costs. But his passion and zeal for life is a will that men must harness in the coming years to truly live a life of purpose.
Spontaneity must be directed towards creation and not destruction. That positive side of spontaneity leads the individual away from distractions to what really matters in life.
Go For True love
“This is your life. Don’t play hard to get. It’s a free world. All you have to do is fall in love — play the game. Everybody play the game of love.” – “Play the Game”
One of the biggest myths ever told is that work, hobbies, travel, sex, and drugs will make you happy.
While those can be fun, they cannot substitute the fundamental elements that give human beings the deepest meaning in life: true love, true community, true friendship, true art, and true virtue.
Out of those, true love is of particular importance.
As Freddie Mercury said when reflecting on his career and love life:
“You can have everything in the world and still be the loneliest man. And that is the most bitter type of loneliness, success has brought me world idolisation and millions of pounds. But it’s prevented me from having the one thing we all need: A loving, ongoing relationship.”
It seems men, and perhaps the world, have given up on true love.
The state of relationships is not in a good place. Today, men are more likely to be single and not actively looking for a partner. People seem obsessed with finding perfection in their partners. Redpill dating gurus advise men to avoid raising children, get vasectomies, and to sleep with 50 plus women before getting married.
True love is not just sex.
Love itself is the desire for the good of another person for their own sake — it is the highest and strongest form of kindness. True love is a feeling of deep emotional connection with someone you care for. It is a deep and intuitive pull that you feel for another in your heart before reason has the chance to enter your mind. It is the feeling that someone else’s soul truly completes your own.
True love is a worthy pursuit in and of itself — but it is also highly demanding and requires great investment and emotional strength. Abandoning true love for manic self love, self optimization, or hookup culture is easy because you will never be hurt the way a true lover can hurt you. On the flip side, avoiding heartbreak means you will never be loved the way a true lover can love you.
Given Mercury’s hedonic sex life, it may seem odd to take advice from him on pursuing true love in our current age.
From one perspective, Mercury was flawed in the way that he pursued relationships: he was unfaithful to partners at times and and he strayed from the pursuit of true love in his pursuit of sex for the sake of sex.
And yet, Mercury was also a devoted lover who was deeply affectionate to his partners. While he was burdened with a hedonistic drive, he was also searching for someone he could really be with on a deep level — and he wasn’t afraid to pursue them. Mercury knew the importance of going for true love; his love life, as tumultuous and winding as it was, was really a journey for finding what he, and most human beings, truly long for.
“The problem with love is that you lose control and that is a very vulnerable state to be in. I would love to really have a beautiful relationship with somebody, but it never seems to work out. What I would like most of all is to be in a state of blissful love.” –Freddie Mercury
Early on, Mercury had relationships with women — the most notable being Mary Austin, for whom “Love of My Life” was written.
Freddie and Mary were a canon couple. They stayed together for six years and took care of each other lovingly. Mary was the daughter of working class parents and worked at Biba, a high end clothing shop. She covered Freddie financially when they first started living together in 1969; he wasn’t making any money at the start of his music career, so she paid for their apartment and all their bills.
According to friend Yasmine Pettigrew:
“They were very much a pair. He watched over her as well. He always wanted to know, if he was with Mary, that Mary was okay.”
“She stuck by him and he stuck by her. You put your life in your hands if you tried to come between them, that’s for sure. Everyone knew that. They had a bond which people who are together forever have.”
Mercury, for his part, was immensely affectionate and adoring. Even after Freddie came out and began mostly same sex relationships, he still kept her as his most trusted friend and confidante till the very end. After Freddie died, he left Mary most of his fortune. He once said of Mary in a 1985 interview:
“All my lovers asked me why they couldn’t replace Mary, but it’s simply impossible. The only friend I’ve got is Mary, and I don’t want anybody else. To me, she was my common-law wife. To me, it was a marriage. We believe in each other; that’s enough for me.”
After coming out to Mary in 1975, Mercury entered a new phase of his love life as he more freely pursued male love interests. He went through a string of boyfriends before finding his long term partner, Jim Hutton. However, during this process of finding true love, Freddie encountered numerous challenges.
The first was a deep sense of loneliness.
The type of isolation Mercury faced as an adult was different from the kind he faced as a young man. At boarding school, he was far away from family and suffered from a lack of social connection. As an adult, he had friends he could lean on and lots of people he could have sex with. However, he was lonely in the sense that he lacked the strong emotional connection with a committed romantic partner that he could really trust.
“Most people wonder how someone like Freddie Mercury can be lonely. He has money, he has cars and chauffeurs, he has the lot. You can seem to have everything, and yet have nothing. Maybe one day I’ll catch up with myself and that will be my downfall. In fact, sometimes that kind of loneliness is the hardest to bear because within all that, all the people around you, you’re still lonely. You see, loneliness doesn’t just mean shut off in a room by yourself, it can be that you’re in a crowded area but still be the most lonely person, and that’s the most hurtful thing.” –Freddie Mercury
The second problem Mercury endured was toxic relationships.
Freddie dated Bill Reid for a short time and ended the relationship because it was abusive. According to some accounts, Reid once injured Freddie’s hand by biting it and damaged their hotel room in a violent argument.
The third challenge that Mercury endured on his path to true love was the pain of heartbreak.
As stated previously, Freddie broke up with many partners before landing Jim Hutton. One can only imagine the pain of his breakup with Mary – after realizing his true romantic attractions, it meant giving up a romantic relationship with the person he loved most in the world.
“I also found that in a way, over the years, I’ve become bitter. I just don’t trust anybody because I’ve been let down so many times. The more you’ve been let down, the more hurt you endure. I find it very hard to open up because I just don’t trust the buggers. You just can’t win in my situation, and that’s the way it is.”-Freddie Mercury
The fourth challenge Mercury faced was rejection.
Freddie initially met Hutton at a gay nightclub in the 80s and offered to buy him a drink, but Hutton didn’t recognize Mercury and turned him down.
A year and a half later, Mercury met Hutton at the same place and pulled the same drink offer; this time Hutton accepted and the two began a relationship.
In the end, Mercury and Hutton settled down together. Freddie referred to Hutton as his husband, and they both wore wedding bands to signify their love for each other at a time when gay marriage was not allowed. There’s also an adorable video of Freddie playing around in a bubble bath while Hutton stands by and indulges him.
Things were not always great — they had their share of fights and infidelity. Despite this, Hutton and Freddie truly did love each other. He took care of Freddie until the end – according to Hutton:
“Another thing [Freddie would] often tell me, right up until the night he died, was: ‘I love you.’ And it was never an ‘I love you’ which just rolled off the tongue; he always meant it.”
Hutton himself passed away in 2010 from lung cancer.
Through all of these ups and downs, twists and turns, Mercury — just as he did in his battle with AIDS — turned his suffering into art of the highest passion.
“I’m possessed by love! Isn’t everybody? Most of my songs are love ballads and things to do with sadness and torture and pain. I seem to write a lot of sad songs because I’m a very tragic person. But there is always an element of humour at the end.” –Freddie Mercury
In Queen’s electrifying 1981 live performance of “Somebody to Love” in Montreal, Freddie Mercury sheds a single tear down his left cheek as he and Queen play the ending of the song. Many of his songs reflect his struggles with love and heartbreak:
“I don’t want my freedom –
There’s no reason for living with a broken heart.”
“Each morning I get up I die a little — can’t barely stand on my feet
Take a look in the mirror and cry
Lord what you’re doing to me.”
“I am forever searching high and low
But why does everybody tell me no?
Neptune of the seas
Have you an answer for me please
But the Lily of the Valley doesn’t know”
“Why did you have to leave me?
Why did you deceive me?
And take me to the path of Nevermore
When you said you didn’t love me anymore.”
-“Nevermore”
“Love of my life can’t you see?
Bring it back, bring it back
Don’t take it away from me because,
You don’t know … what it means to me.”
“How can I go on?
From day to day?
Who can make me strong in every way?
Where can I be safe — where can I belong?
In this great big world of sadness.”
“I could give up all my life, for just one kiss
I would surely die if you dismissed me from your love.”
“I guess we drift alone in separate ways
I don’t have all that far to go
God knows I’ve learnt to play the lonely man — I’ve never felt so low in all my life!
We were born to be just losers
So, I guess there’s a limit on how far we go.”
And yet, many of these same songs express hope for success in both romance and life:
“It’s a long hard fight, but I always live for tomorrow
I’ll look back on my life and say I did it for love.”
“I’ve just gotta get out of this prison cell
One day I’m going to be free, lord!”
“I’m taking my ride with destiny
Willing to play my part
Living with painful memories
Loving with all my heart
Made in heaven,
Made in heaven
It was all meant to be!
“When I grow older
I will be there at your side to remind you how I still love you
I still love you.”
“I was born to love you,
With every single beat of my heart.”
“I will find you
Anywhere you go I’ll be right behind you
Right until the ends of the earth
I’ll get no sleep till I find you
To tell you,
When I’ve found you …
I love you.”
“You and me
We are destined, you’ll agree
To spend the rest of our lives with each other
The rest of our days, like two lovers
Forever … forever.”
-“Bijou”
One shouldn’t look at Mercury and seek to copy his life in every detail. It’s a superficial reading of Freddie’s life to conclude that one should go for all the drugs and sex one can consume simply because the greatest frontman did it.
Despite his imperfections, a deep part of Mercury still aimed for true love — and through trial and tribulation, he eventually found it in Jim Hutton. Ultimately, Mercury had the courage to try again and again in love and in life. He was sentimental and romantic — unafraid to want to take care of others or tell them how he felt.
On the one hand, pursuing true love means facing the devastation that can come from connecting with another human so deeply only for them to tear your heart in two.
And yet, true love provides something that no other pursuit can provide – the feeling, even if only for a second, that you belong completely to another person and they to you. No one chooses their family or the community they are raised in — but true love offers us the freedom to feel completely accepted in this life.
The prize to win is worth the fight.
In a world where entropy wins in the end; where everything inevitably goes toward chaos; where the disease of existence eventually claims our minds and bodies — the only thing we can do is strive for the highest things in life in spite of the bad.
The peaks and valleys of love are unpredictable and ever changing. Love, like life, is messy. True love is a scary journey, but it is one worth taking.
Conclusion
“I’m not going to be a pop star. I’m going to be a legend.” – Young Freddie Mercury
Today’s men face massive challenges, as discussed in the introduction. Finding heroes who can truly guide us through hardship is a challenge in and of itself.
In the introduction, I dismantle Andrew Tate’s facade as a “real man” with one sentence. It only seems fair that I sum up, in a similar way, why Freddie Mercury is a real man worthy of hero status:
Freddie Mercury was a misfit in the beginning, a man who stopped violence at his shows with his music, a man who was brave enough to say what he felt in front of thousands, a man who cared for his friends, a man brave enough to go for true love, and ultimately a man who faced AIDS and conquered death with his songs.
A thousand years from now, the masculinity of Freddie Mercury — the strength, love, creativity, irreverence, and music of his soul — will far outlast the pathetic “manliness” of Andrew Tate and the redpill.
“Freddie made the last person at the back of the furthest stand in a stadium feel that he was connected. He gave people proof that a man could achieve his dreams—made them feel that through him they were overcoming their own shyness, and becoming the powerful figure of their ambitions. And he lived life to the full. He devoured life. He celebrated every minute. And, like a great comet, he left a luminous trail which will sparkle for many a generation to come.” –Brian May
Realists may say that we should not look up to Freddie Mercury because ordinary men will never achieve his talent or success. While this is true, we can all aspire to be like Freddie in terms of our moral character. As Viktor Frankl said, we must be optimistic in order to live lives of true meaning:
“If we take man as he really is, we make him worse. But if we overestimate him … we promote him to what he really can be. So we have to be idealists, in a way — because then we wind up as the true, the real realists.” – Viktor Frankl
Like Freddie, we must all aim to be strong, kind, irreverent, spontaneous, and go for true love. He would have wanted that for the men of today.
As Freddie wrote:
“Just go for it, my love is with you always.”
Categories: Arts, Culture, Ideas, Philosophy
The Texas Orator 
