New episode of ‘Mr Bad Guy’ series focuses on Freddie Mercury’s songwriting

The second episode of the three-part YouTube series looking back at Freddie Mercury’s debut solo album, Mr Bad Guy, has just been released.

Archival footage of Mercury’s 1985 interview with journalist David Wigg looks at the Queen frontman’s approach to songwriting, with Mercury noting “the actual structure of the melody comes easy to me, it’s the lyrical content I find hard.”

“I like to write nice little catchy tunes, but in terms of the lyrical content it’s difficult. So I have to work on that part of it,” he says. “I’m not a poet and I hate writing lyrics anyway. I wish somebody else could do it.”

Mentioning Elton John’s songwriting partner, he jokes, “I wish I had a Bernie Taupin, but I’m not like that. I like to do it all myself, I’m a greedy b****.”

He later says that all his songs are about “emotion and feeling.”

“I’d love to write songs about something totally different, but they all seem to end up in a very emotional and tragic way,” he says. “Maybe I’m a very tragic person. I don’t know why, but there’s an element of humor at the end. I’m a very loving person, you know.”

The video also features footage from the Dante-inspired music video for the album’s second single, “Made in Heaven.” At one point in the clip Wigg asks Mercury, who died in 1991, if he thinks he’s going to heaven.

“No, I don’t want to,” Freddie says, joking, “Hell is much better. Look at the interesting people that you’re going to meet down there.”