Barcelona

About Barcelona

Barcelona is a collaborative studio album recorded by Freddie Mercury, frontman of popular British rock band Queen, and operatic soprano Montserrat Caballé. It was released in 1988. After Barcelona was selected to host the 1992 Summer Olympics, Mercury was approached to write a song as a theme for the forthcoming games. The idea was to create a duet with Caballé, as she was from the city. He had been a long-standing admirer of her and she in turn grew to respect his talents very highly. They decided to work on an album together, with Mercury and Mike Moran taking the creative lead as songwriters. Mercury and Moran made and sent her tapes of the music with Mercury singing in falsetto as a guide vocal for Montserrat's parts. As they rarely had an opening in their schedule to meet, her parts were recorded at another location. A special edition of the album was released on 3 September 2012. It features a new version of the album with the previous instrumental tracks replaced with new, live symphonic orchestration and percussion rather than synthesizers and drum machines. The new edition also has a new unique album cover more »