It's A Hard Life - 2014 Remaster

This is a song written by Freddie Mercury. It's about the hardships of maintaining any kind of significant relationship with somebody and have that person's complete trust and all the other things you give to somebody when together. Brian May did an excellent guitar solo on the track.

On Queen's Greatest Video Hits 2 collection, Roger Taylor said that this was one of his favorite songs that Freddie Mercury wrote, but he absolutely HATED the music video and being a part of it.

Musically, the song harks back to classic Queen rock ballads like "Play The Game" and "Save Me," and the piano parts sound strikingly similar in places to the classic first section from "Bohemian Rhapsody." The very high notes in the opening lines ("I don't want my freedom, there's no reason for living with a broken heart") proved problematic to sing live at times. Nevertheless, the emotion is palatable - and real, according to Brian May on the Greatest Hits 2-DVD commentary. "To my mind this is one of the most beautiful songs that Freddie ever wrote. It's straight from the heart, and he really opened up during the creation of it, I sat with him for hours and hours and hours just trying pull it away and get the most out of it. It's one of his loveliest songs."