In honor of gay icon Freddie Mercury’s would-be 73rd birthday today (September 5), Universal Music Group (UMG) has released an adorable animated official music video for his 1985 song Love Me Like There’s No Tomorrow.
The video, directed by Esteban Bravo and Beth David and animated by Woodblock, honors the memory of Mercury, as well as his legacy through The Mercury Phoenix Trust (MPT), which has reached millions in the fight against HIV/AIDS worldwide.
“We wanted to tell a story that was relevant to Freddie’s life, but not explicitly about him,” said directors Bravo and David. “The AIDS crisis of the 1980s is a huge part of LGBTQ history, and it’s something that we knew needed to be handled with care. It’s a fine line to walk between shedding light on a subject, and perpetuating a stigma, and we were cautious not to lean into tropes and stereotypes that might hurt the modern understanding of the AIDS virus, rather than help it.”
The video tells the love story between two white-blood-cells-slash-men as one of them is infected by the HIV virus.
“This perspective gave us a more direct visual representation of our conflict, which allowed us to explore the more nuanced struggles that characters face in their relationship with each other, their perceptions of themselves, and society’s perception, bias, and neglect of them,” Brave and David said. “The LGBTQ community fought for years for the right to proper research and healthcare, and because of that fight, millions of lives have been saved. We wanted to celebrate that victory. Through perseverance, strength, and love, our characters not only survive, but life long, healthy lives together.”
The video has a happy ending as the man is treated and the two are able to grow old together.
“Of the many responsibilities we have to our artists, safeguarding their legacies is perhaps the most important one,” said Dave Rocco, EVP, Creative, UMG, in a statement. “As far-reaching and radical a legacy as Freddie Mercury’s, it is our duty to ensure he continues to provoke, educate, and inspire…. [W]e knew this piece had to be made in Freddie’s image: honest, brave, and most of all, beautiful.”
Love Me Like There’s No Tomorrow is taken from “Never Boring,” the definitive Freddie Mercury solo collection. It is set to be released worldwide on October 11.