The Great Pretender

The Great Pretender Artist: Freddie Mercury
Label: Hollywood Records
Category: Music


Average customer rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Media: Audio CD
Number Of Discs: 1


UPC: 720616140227
EAN: 0720616140227
ASIN: B000000OCF


Release Date: 1992-11-24

The Great Pretender


Related Categories:

General General
Categories | Pop | Styles | Music
Pop Rock Pop Rock
Categories | Pop | Styles | Music
General General
Categories | Rock | Styles | Music
Progressive Rock Progressive Rock
Categories | Progressive | Rock | Styles | Music
General General
Categories | Hard Rock & Metal | Styles | Music
Hard Rock Hard Rock
Categories | Hard Rock & Metal | Styles | Music
Album-Oriented Rock (AOR) Album-Oriented Rock (AOR)
Categories | Classic Rock | Styles | Music

Tracks:

  1. The Great Pretender
  2. Foolin' Around
  3. Time
  4. Your Kind Of Lover
  5. Exercises In Free Love
  6. In My Defence
  7. Mr. Bad Guy
  8. Let's Turn It On
  9. Living On My Own
  10. My Love Is Dangerous
  11. Love Kills
  12. Living On My Own (Techno Mix)

Similar Items:

  1. Barcelona
  2. Solo Collection
  3. Innuendo
  4. The Miracle
  5. Made in Heaven

Customer Reviews:

4 out of 5 stars An interesting sampling of Mercury's solo work .......2006-11-19

Another compilation of Freddie Mercury's solo work , including his magnifficent reworking of The Platters hit The Great Pretender , the offbeat Foolin' Around and Living On My Own , the funky Your Kind Of Lover and Let's Turn It On , the bold Living On My Own and my personal favourite among Mercury solo Hits , Love Kills.
An interesting sampling of Mercury's solo work.

2 out of 5 stars NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!.......2006-09-04

Have they no shame? The mixing engineers absolutely desecrated Freddy's music. This album is not for true Freddy fans. Casual fans and fans of Queen (only) may enjoy this, but anyone who is interested in hearing Freddy's true solo art the way he intended it should stay the #^#@ away from this (as well as "The Freddy Mercury Album" which is the same as "The Great Pretender", different packaging).

Allow me to provide an analogy:
If you're a Freddy Mercury/Queen fan, I assume you're old enough to have seen the original Star Wars when it came out in '76. It was great wasn't it? Sure, the cantina scene was cheezy as hell, and some of the special effects were--by today's standards--lackluster. BUT WE LOVED IT. Then in the late 90s, Lucasfilm decided to re-do Star Wars, chopping up the cantina scene and adding in stupid modern CGI effects. I was sickened, and I'm hoping most of you were as well.

"The Great Pretender" is the equivalent of the Star Wars 90s re-release. A travesty. We don't want stupid CGI effects on the Millenium Falcon, nor do we want stupid "arena rock" reverb on Freddy's drums. We don't want the annoying distorted guitars mixed in after Freddy's death. And we certainly don't want the inane Fine-Young-Cannibals-ripoff drumbeat overtop the original grooves.

Go find yourself a copy of the original MR. BAD GUY album. It may sound cheezy at first with its dated drum machine and flamboyant piano playing, but c'mon folks, that's what Freddy was all about. Let's remember him that way, not through some post-production sound engineer's drunken nightmare of a remix.

I give Freddy's voice 5 stars, and I give the mixing engineer -3 stars. Averages out to a 2. Avoid it. Read my review of "The Freddy Mercury Album" for more.

3 out of 5 stars Hmmmmmm.......2004-08-25

I would like to say I enjoy this album immensely, I am a big fan of Freddie Mercury but this album overlooks many of his solo songs of sheer briliance and focusses largly on lame covers and Freddies synth led dance/disco material. Foolin Around and Your Kind Of Lover sound like outtakes from the highly overrated Dance Floor/Acid Jazz Queen travesty Hot Space. Still theres some great stuff with Excercises In Free Love, Mr. Bad Guy, My Love Is Dangerous and Love Kills. These show Freddies songwriting at its best and elevate the album from the dreck and theres no deneing through even the worst parts of this album the former member of Wreckage is in fine form vocally and his piano although very minimal is also great.

4 out of 5 stars Too real.......2003-09-06

This is a compilation album of Freddie Mercury solo material. Six of the songs are from his "Mr. Bad Guy" album, two are from Dave Clark's musical 'TIME', two are from movie soundtracks, and there is one other song which, I believe, is an outtake from the "Barcelona" sessions. The songs on this CD have been remixed. I have never heard the original mixes of these songs, so I can only judge them based on how they sound here. Well, they sound pretty good to me. I enjoyed all the songs here, some more than others, of course. If you are a fan of Queen, you will probably enjoy this CD, too.

5 out of 5 stars

Music Album:

  1. The Party's Over ~ Smoking Popes
  2. Tomcats Screaming Outside ~ Roland Orzabal
  3. Rebel Kind: The Best of Dino, Desi & Billy ~ Desi & Billy Dino
  4. Hard Attack ~ Dust
  5. Change of Heart ~ Eric Carmen
  6. Influences ~ Mark King
  7. Pure ~ The Golden Palominos
  8. Ether Seeds ~ Ether Seeds
  9. Rewired + the Hits ~ Mike + the Mechanics
  10. Lovers, Lead The Way! ~ Viva Voce

Music Album

Music Album

Music CD

Butterfly Net ~ Rock 4

Those Dizzy Days ~ Lee Morgan

Carrasco ~ Hiram Bullock

Changeless ~ Keith Jarrett Trio

Faith in a New Key

Smoke Stack ~ Andrew Hill

Prática de Tara Verde ~ Tara Verde

Young Man's Blues [Japan Import]

1st Christmas (+ Bonus DVD) ~ Dream, Fruit Punch, Sweets

Jyunin Toiro ~ Minimum Wage