This isn’t a studio album, and it’s worth saying so plainly. Messenger of the Gods: The Singles Collection arrived in 2016, a posthumous compilation that gathers Freddie’s solo singles into one place rather than presenting something new. Freddie never sequenced it, never approved a running order, never sat in a room deciding it was finished. It was assembled long after he was gone.

What it does, usefully, is pull together the scattered solo output: the A-sides, the singles that lived outside any album, and a few B-sides and remixes. For the listener it’s a way into a body of work that was always more spread out and harder to find than Queen’s catalogue, and it is the only place a true one-off like “The Great Pretender,” a standalone 1987 single that never belonged to a studio record, finally has a home. Treat it as a doorway, not a destination. The songs here were made across different years and different moods, and each one rewards being met on its own terms.