B-side "Bijou" Genre Soft rock | Format 7"
cassette
CD Length 4:13 | |
Released 5 September 1991 (First Issue)
9 December 1991 (Second Issue) Recorded March 1989 – November 1990 at
Metropolis Studios
(London, United Kingdom)
Mountain Studios
(Montreux, Switzerland) | ||
"These Are the Days of Our Lives" is a song by the British rock band Queen. Although credited to the whole band, it was largely written by their drummer Roger Taylor, and is the eighth track on the band's 1991 album Innuendo. Keyboards were programmed by the four band members in the studio, and conga percussion (a synthesised conga) was recorded by their producer David Richards (although it was mimed in the video by Roger Taylor).
Contents
It was released as a single in the US on Freddie Mercury's 45th birthday, 5 September 1991, and as double A-side single in the UK on 9 December, in the wake of Mercury's death, with the Queen track "Bohemian Rhapsody". The single debuted at #1 on the UK Singles Chart, and remained at the top for five weeks. The song was awarded a Brit Award for "Best Single" in 1992.
"These Are the Days of Our Lives" hearkens back to similarly themed 1975 Queen song "Love of My Life", twice using the line "I still love you". At the end of the song, Mercury simply speaks those words, as he would often do in live versions of "Love of My Life."
Live performances and covers
The song was first played live on 20 April 1992 at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert, sung by George Michael and Lisa Stansfield. This live version was included on the 1993 album Five Live (EP), credited to 'George Michael with Queen & Lisa Stansfield'.
The song was played on the 2005/2006 Queen + Paul Rodgers tours with vocals provided by Roger Taylor. On stage the song was accompanied by a video of the band in their early days in Japan, including many shots focusing on ex-band members Freddie Mercury and John Deacon.
The song was used on 1 July 2007 at the Concert for Diana held at the new Wembley Stadium, London in honour of Diana, Princess of Wales, who had died almost 10 years earlier. At the end of the concert, a video montage of Diana as a child was presented and this song was playing in the background.
A cover version by Petula Clark is included on her 2008 compilation album Then & Now.
Music video
The accompanying video was the last to feature frontman Freddie Mercury as he was in the final stages of his battle with AIDS. The majority of the footage used in the video was filmed by Rudi Dolezal and Hannes Rossacher of DoRo Productions on 30 May 1991.
For the promotional video, Freddie Mercury, Roger Taylor and John Deacon were present at the shoot, with additional footage of guitarist Brian May filmed some weeks later and edited into the footage, as he was out of the country on a radio promotional tour at the time of the principal film shoot. The video was released in black and white to hide the full extent of Mercury's faltering condition from AIDS (following rumours about his health that had been at the centre of much media and public speculation for over a year) following on from its use in the video for "I'm Going Slightly Mad" earlier in 1991.
Colour footage of the band filming the video later emerged, showing just how frail Mercury really looked, and justifying the band's decision to film in black and white out of respect for him. In this music video, Mercury is wearing a waistcoat with pictures of cats that was made for him by a close friend, and which he loved. With his knowing farewell look straight at the camera, Mercury whispers "I still love you" as the song ends, which are his last ever words on camera.
The version of the finished video serviced to the U.S. market also featured some animated footage produced by animators for the Walt Disney Studios, as Queen's North American record label, Hollywood Records, is a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company. In Europe, a different, 'clean' version of the video without the animated sequences was released. Then another video version was released in 1992 to promote the Classic Queen compilation album in the US, combining old footage of the band from 1973 to 1991 plus the performances of the band from the US aired video.