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And what better way to follow a duet by a dead man and a woman who's still alive than another one? Although this is one of two tracks duplicated from earlier albums in the series, this is one I've written about before so there's no need to say anything much more about it in this post, except to note that its reappearance was due to its originally intended use as theme of the 1992 Olympics. The BBC also used it extensively in TV coverage of the Games, and somewhere between this massive publicity and some sentimentality in the wake of Mercury's death less than a year before, it managed to chart higher than it had the first time.
Instead, I'll take the opportunity to reinvent the conclusion posts I used to do in mentioning that this track seems almost too perfect a summation of the Now 23, which seems exceptionally heavy on secondhand material. It's fair enough that some tracks are repeated over the history of the series, as new generations of buyers emerge, but this is one of four old tracks re-issued here (defined as records from previous decades), plus four re-workings (from Was Not Was, Erasure Heaven 17 and Roy Orbison) and the posthumous Bob Marley track. Throw in another five cover versions and you've accounted for nearly half the album already. It mightn't matter so much were it not that so few of the new acts who feature here seem to have made all that much long-term impact. If this were the only evidence you had of pop music in the second half of 1992 (er, and January when that Simply Red track came out) you'd have to conclude that things had gone a bit wrong somewhere.
Freddie Mercury also appears on: Now 9, 25.
Available on: Barcelona
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