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