{"id":5019,"date":"2026-07-22T21:19:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T19:19:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/queenmuseum.com\/?p=5019"},"modified":"2026-07-23T00:08:56","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T22:08:56","slug":"tear-it-up-freddie-mercury-handwritten-lyrics-1984","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/queenmuseum.com\/?p=5019","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Tear It Up,&#8221; in Freddie&#8217;s Hand (1984)"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure style=\"margin:1.5em 0;text-align:center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"max-width:100%;height:auto;\" src=\"https:\/\/queenmuseum.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/SAM_3659-scaled-1380x920.jpg\" alt=\"Two handwritten pages of Tear It Up lyrics by Freddie Mercury, exhibition display\"\/><\/figure>\n<p>Two pages, handwritten by Freddie, of the lyrics to &#8220;Tear It Up&#8221; &#8212; the song that would appear on The Works in 1984. The words aren&#8217;t yet final; there are corrections throughout, in Freddie&#8217;s own hand, exactly the kind of working document that rarely survives an album&#8217;s production.<\/p><div class=\"2416a19e08873d0076105f82e7f970da\" data-index=\"2\" style=\"float: none; margin:0px 0 0px 0; text-align:center;\">\n<script async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-6280590296994447\"\r\n     crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script>\r\n<!-- quadrato -->\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\r\n     style=\"display:block;text-align:center;margin:0 auto;max-width:100%\"\r\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-6280590296994447\"\r\n     data-ad-slot=\"6452889443\"\r\n     data-ad-format=\"auto\"\r\n     data-full-width-responsive=\"true\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script>\n<\/div>\n\n<p>The song itself is credited to Brian May, but Freddie &#8212; finding Brian&#8217;s own handwriting hard to make out &#8212; rewrote the lyrics himself so he&#8217;d have something legible to work from in the studio. It&#8217;s a small, very human detail: even inside a band as famous as Queen, someone still had to be able to read the words off the page.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-top:2em;\"><em>This piece is part of &#8220;Keep On Rockin&#8217; &#8212; the 2019 Exhibition.&#8221; <a href=\"https:\/\/queenmuseum.com\/?page_id=5013\">See the full exhibition here.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<div class=\"2416a19e08873d0076105f82e7f970da\" data-index=\"3\" style=\"float: none; margin:0px 0 0px 0; text-align:center;\">\n<script async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-6280590296994447\"\r\n     crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script>\r\n<!-- stretto -->\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\r\n     style=\"display:block;text-align:center;margin:0 auto;max-width:100%\"\r\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-6280590296994447\"\r\n     data-ad-slot=\"5886106757\"\r\n     data-ad-format=\"auto\"\r\n     data-full-width-responsive=\"true\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script>\n<\/div>\n\n<div style=\"font-size: 0px; height: 0px; line-height: 0px; margin: 0; padding: 0; clear: both;\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Two pages, handwritten by Freddie, of the lyrics to &#8220;Tear It Up&#8221; &#8212; the song that would appear on The<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5011,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[7,62],"tags":[30,14,43,147,121,56,146,145,17],"class_list":["post-5019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-signed","category-queen-memorabilia","tag-brian-may","tag-freddie-mercury","tag-freddie-mercury-autograph","tag-freddie-mercury-handwritten-lyrics","tag-keep-on-rockin-exhibition-2020","tag-queen-collector-rarities","tag-tear-it-up","tag-the-works","tag-top-rarity"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/queenmuseum.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/queenmuseum.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/queenmuseum.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/queenmuseum.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/queenmuseum.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5019"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/queenmuseum.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5019\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5067,"href":"https:\/\/queenmuseum.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5019\/revisions\/5067"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/queenmuseum.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/queenmuseum.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/queenmuseum.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/queenmuseum.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}