At least a part of the music world certainly is in a state of shock today after Michael Jackson’s death yesterday (no, I’m not really including myself in this part)… I personally liked his music in Thriller and Bad times to some extent, but that’s not what this is about – neither is his, erm, partially eccentric, insane and dubious lifestyle especially in later years –, but instead it’s about Michael Jackson and Freddie Mercury, for they were actually friends for some time and recorded a few songs together – which, however, were never released this way, since that friendship ended when Michael got so successfull with Thriller, and as far as I remember, different ways of life also mattered…

Anyway, there is a quite nice demo version of “State Of Shock” (still-image video) as duet by Freddie and Michael which the latter later recorded and released with Mick Jagger, and a demo of the Queen/Freddie song1 “There Must Be More To Life Than This”, which, however, isn’t that great in this duet version, hence here also the link to the final Freddie version; Jackson wasn’t that great on ballads anyway, now was he? I wasn’t able to find the third song that is said to exist, “Victory”.

Brian May wrote on his blog-like “Soapbox” a few words about Jackson, if anyone’s interested.

1. was originally planned for the Queen album The Works, but ended up on Freddie’s solo album after he and Brian had written “Is This The World We Created…?” ↺