Mr. Bad Guy is the only solo studio album Freddie Mercury ever finished, and he treated it like a door he had been waiting years to open. He made it in Munich, away from Queen, chasing the musical territories he said he could not reach inside the band. Every one of its eleven songs is his alone, written and shaped without the four-way push and pull that built the Queen catalogue. You can hear the difference, the freedom of it, a man trying things on to see what fit. It arrived in 1985, reached No. 6 in the UK and went Gold, then settled into the odd half-light reserved for the side projects of people who are famous for something else. Most listeners came to Queen first and stayed there. This is the record where Freddie, for once, answered to no one but himself.