Synopsis

Freddie Mercury turns "The Great Pretender" into a playful self-portrait. He performs among oversized cardboard cutouts and revisits exaggerated versions of his most recognizable Queen and solo-video personas, transforming his past imagery into a theatrical joke about fame and performance. The visual culminates in a deliberately extravagant ensemble featuring Freddie alongside similarly styled doubles, while Roger Taylor and Peter Straker appear as backing singers in drag. The result is both a parody of Mercury's public image and a celebration of his talent for reinvention.

Factoids & Trivia

• The video is built around Mercury's own idea of himself as a performer who adopts different characters. On his official website, he described the title as fitting because so much of what he did involved pretending and acting.

• Its visual references include "Bohemian Rhapsody," "Radio Ga Ga," "It's a Hard Life," "I Want to Break Free," "I Was Born to Love You," and other earlier Queen and solo-era images. The cardboard Freddie cutouts turn that career retrospective into a surreal visual gag.

• Roger Taylor and actor Peter Straker appear as Mercury's female backing singers. An extended version preserves backstage footage of the trio preparing for the shoot.

• Mercury had shaved off the mustache he had worn through much of the 1980s, making the video especially notable for presenting a newly clean-shaven look.

• The song was Mercury's cover of the Platters' 1950s standard. Released as a single in the United Kingdom on February 23, 1987, it reached No. 4, his highest solo-chart position there at the time.

• The flamboyant outfit associated with "It's a Hard Life" was reused for this video, reinforcing its deliberately self-referential approach.

• The video has remained one of Mercury's most recognizable solo clips, and the song later gained another generation of listeners after being used as the theme for the Japanese animated series "Great Pretender."