Queen Single of the Day (June 19)

Singles Another edition of my little series about the B-sides of Queen singles, this time “Stealin'” on the “Breakthru” single from 19 June 1989 from the The Miracle album. Though today the A-side also gets its spot…

New: » All songs in a row in a Youtube playlist

First the A-side: This is – after a slow intro that’s originally from a separate song “A New Life Is Born” which didn’t get beyond demo sage – a fast-paced rock song that somehow makes one think of a train, and exactly that’s what the video shows: Queen performing on a flatbed carriage behind an old steam engine; the blonde at the beginning is, by the way, Roger Taylor’s then girlfriend Debbie Leng.

Freddie once said in an interview (see Wikipedia) that this was a great example of two separate bits coming together to make a final track. He commented on how the band had about 30 tracks to work with and only completed a handful, working on all of them at least somewhat.

» Breakthru – official video
» Breakthru (Extended Version) – fan video (using the official one)
» A New Life Is Born (Demo) (1:30) – still-image video
» lyrics

On to the B-side, a bluesy tongue-in-cheek song (which offers more variety than one might think from first couple of minutes) about a notorious thief, and there’s a (really good!) demo version of it that normal Youtube users need to split in two parts to upload it (here linked to inside my playlist):

» Stealin’ (4:01) – single version, still-image
» Stealin’ (Demo) (12:10) – still-image
» lyrics


Photo: clix/sxc

2 Comments

  1. jL

    Ah, das Zugvideo war eines der ersten, die ich “damals” bewusst wahrgenommen habe und ich war schwer beeindruckt :)

    Stealin wird tatsächlich nach der Hälfte richtig interessant. Hat Ansätze von Innuendo.

    • c

      Wobei zur 2. Hälfte von Stealin’ mit den Wörtern “In charge of my heart” auch noch ein Querverweis auf das gleichnamige Lied von The Cross (Rogers Neben-Band damals) interessant sein könnte, das 1990 (auch nur als B-Seite) erschienen ist; Queenpedia meint:

      Reportedly, this song was recorded during sessions for The Miracle but left unreleased. Perhaps this is why Freddie interpolates some of these lyrics into the coda of Stealin’?

      (Ich wollte den Beitrag oben aber nicht zu lange werden lassen…)

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