QUEEN RELEASES FREE AIDS DAY SINGLE

Rock band Queen has announced the release of a newly recorded free song for Nelson Mandela’s 46664 event on World Aids Day.

Spurred on by their commitments as Ambassadors to Nelson Mandela’s 46664 HIV AIDS global campaign, on which the spotlight will fall December 1 with a World Aids Day awareness and fundraising concert in Johannesburg, South Africa, Brian May, Roger Taylor and Paul Rodgers have been rushing to finish a track specially written for 46664 by Roger Taylor and have it available as a free download in time for this coming Saturday’s AIDS HIV benefit concert.

The track, Taylor’s Say It’s Not True, originally came to light for the launch of the 46664 campaign back in November 2003. Taylor wrote the song as a gift to Mandela and performed it live for him for the first time with Brian May and Dave Stewart at the inaugural 46664 concert in Cape Town that month. The song carries the message that HIV AIDS is something that can affect any one of us no matter our sexual or racial status.

Taylor performed an acoustic version of the song again nightly during the Queen + Paul Rodgers’ 2005 tour, each time dedicating it to Mandela’s work to bring people and politicians together to fight HIV AIDS.

Having played two previous 46664 concerts, but unable to perform at the concert this year, Queen decided to revisit the song, with all three of them sharing the vocals, and to make the song the band’s message of support to Mandela this year.

“By making the song available for free,” says Taylor, “we hope to help Nelson Mandela with his campaign to get across the message that no-one is safe from infection. We have to be aware, we have to protect ourselves and those we love. The song follows the line of Mr. Mandela’s personal message: it’s in our own hands to bring a stop to this.”

Queen’s last new studio recording was back in November 1997 when May, Taylor and band’s bassist John Deacon reunited to record No-One But You a song written by Brian May which was shaped by the loss of the band’s own lead singer, Freddie Mercury, to AIDS.

“Say It’s Not True”, performed by Queen + Paul Rodgers, written by Roger Taylor, will be available to download exclusively on www.queenonline.com and through www.46664.com, from Friday 30th November 2007 in time for World AIDS Day on December 1st.