I just found out about it myself. It's basically both of the latter. This is all taken from Wikipedia.
Following Mercury's death, guitarist Brian May, drummer Roger Taylor, and bass guitarist John Deacon worked with vocal and piano parts that Mercury recorded before his death, adding new instrumentation to the recordings.
Basically, Freddie lived in the studio those last days, before he died, trying to put out as much work as he could for them to use.
In early 1991, having completed work on Innuendo, and some months before his death, Freddie Mercury recorded as many vocals as he could, with the instruction to the rest of the band (Brian May, Roger Taylor, and John Deacon) to complete the songs later. Put to tape during this time were primarily "A Winter's Tale", "Mother Love" and what would eventually become "You Don't Fool Me".
In the documentary Champions of the World, May described these sessions with Mercury as such:
By the time we were recording these other tracks after Innuendo, we had had the discussions and we knew that we were totally on borrowed time because Freddie had been told that he would not make it to that point. I think our plan was to go in there whenever Freddie felt well enough, just to make as much use of him as possible, we basically lived in the studio for a while and when he would call and say, 'I can come in for a few hours', our plan was to just make as much use of him as we could, you know he told us, 'Get me to sing anything, write me anything and I will sing it and I will leave you as much as I possibly can.'
Producer David Richards also added:
The thing that was really unusual about these last songs they recorded was that Freddie insisted on doing final vocals. Normally he had always wanted to wait until all the music was completed before he would put his final vocal on. There must have been a reason for this, I think he felt there wasn’t enough time to have it completed in time. Which also means that he definitely wanted these things to be released, there’s simply no other reason why he would have done that.
With less than an album's worth to work with, the band decided to revisit previously recorded material. The band did not discuss whether Mercury had any input before his death regarding which songs might be considered. The idea was to take existing songs on which Mercury sang and rework them as Queen songs.
This part I find a little less enamorous. It's basically classic posthumous music, bring some old demoes, polish em up.
Still, it's interesting that Freddie was so comfortable with them doing this, and how most of his mates were able to work with this. The Beatles sans Lennon also. It does vary from person to person, how they feel about these. But it is done more glamorously, professionally, than in hip-hop (Tupac's) tbh.
A few more points:
"Mother Love" was the final song co-written by Mercury and May, and was also Mercury's last vocal performance. Mercury's vocals for "Mother Love" were recorded 13–16 May 1991. On his website, May discussed the writing process he and Mercury had (writing both separately and together, and conscious of the nature of the song and the lyrics). Upon reaching the final verse, Mercury told May that he had to go and "have a rest", but that he would return later and finish it. Mercury never made it back to the studio due to his worsening condition, thus May sang the last verse on the track.
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"A Winter's Tale" is a ballad written and composed by Mercury at his apartment in Montreux, Switzerland. It is the last complete song Mercury composed on his own (the music for "Mother Love" is by May).
The vocals were laid down months before Mercury's death and the band completed the backing track sometime after. According to the liner notes in the 2011 release, the band finished the song how they thought Freddie would have wanted it.
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"You Don't Fool Me" was one of the last tracks recorded for Made in Heaven. May has explained on his website that producer David Richards more or less created the framework of the song single-handedly, building from bits of lyrics recorded just before Mercury's death. May has said that before Richards' work, there was no song to speak of. However, after Richards edited and mixed the song (including a bit of harmonies recorded for "A Winter's Tale") he presented it to the band. May, Taylor and Deacon then added their instruments and backing vocals and were surprised to end up with a finished song that had begun as nothing.
So in that case they basically made a hit song out of some spare verses. Interesting formula huh?
