In the creative fields, admiration can so often tick over into envy or competition. Music, especially, is rich with stories of feuds, almost always fuelled by the idea that one person is stepping on another’s toes or the hidden worry that perhaps they’re overtaking them. So, when you hear about two legends praising one another, it’s a heartwarming display of comradeship. That’s how reading about Freddie Mercury’s love for Prince feels.

In many ways, Freddie Mercury and Prince feel like two sides of the same coin. Both were set on making music maximalist again, creating grand-scale productions both in their songs and for their shows. They approached music with a serious flair for fun, pushing the genre to bigger places through their raw and supreme talents. They were also both coming up at the same time, hitting the peak of their fame in the 1980s.It would have been easy for the two to see one another as fierce competitors as they wandered their theatrical rock terrain. But instead, both musicians deeply admired one another, with Mercury possibly even obsessing over Prince.

In fact, Mercury’s longtime assistant, Peter Freestone, claimed that the Queen singer would watch videos of Prince over and over, utterly hooked on performances by the musician. At home, Freestone wrote that Mercury would “veg out” at home, where he’s regularly be found watching a three-hour-long recorded video of one of Prince’s concerts. Even at the end of parties, he would force his entourage to sit down and watch videos of Prince as an early fan, insistent on spreading the word of the American wonder kid around his circle, clicking through to his favourite songs.When Mercury passed in 1991, his bandmates compiled a list of his all-time favourite songs for fans to remember him by. It’s an eclectic mix but serves as a beautiful blueprint for the artist he was. There are huge 1960s hits like Led Zeppelin’s ‘Kashmir’ or The Beach Boys’ ‘I Get Around’. There are also plenty of queer anthems such as ‘Relax’ by Frankie Goes To Hollywood or ‘Woman In Love’ by Barbra Streisand. And amongst them, there’s his all-time favourite Prince song.

‘Little Red Corvette’ was Mercury’s favourite Prince track, taken from his 1982 album 1999. At that point, it became his highest-performing song yet, breaking into the US chart and shooting the artist to higher attention. The music video for the piece became a regular fixture on MTV as his second video on the channel.

Mercury would watch that video, along with live clips of Prince performing the track, over and over. With its storytelling lyrics, it’s easy to see why it appealed to the Queen singer, who was busy writing opera-scale rock records. As an early hit for Prince, it established straight out the gate that he would never be boxed in or expected. Instead, he used his talents both on his instruments, as a singer and as a writer, to make a drama of a song. Prince also was reportedly incredibly inspired by Brian May’s guitar playing, counting him as one of his influences.

“I think Freddie admired Prince because he was so similar to when Freddie was young,” Freestone wrote, with Mercury being 12 years Prince’s senior. He described them both as being “hugely energetic and with that charisma which turns a diminutive form into a giant”.