Queen (1973)
1. Keep Yourself Alive
2. Doing All Right
3. Great King Rat
4. My Fairy King
5. Liar
6. The Night Comes Down
7. Modern Times Rock 'n' Roll
8. Son and Daughter
9. Jesus
10.Seven Seas of Rhye
 
There are few bands that could ever
really claim to be as diverse as Queen. My favorite thing about these
guys is what they accomplished as individuals within the group as
well as the group as a whole. Each one of its four members could write
songs for the group on their own, and each four managed to write a well
known top ten hit at some point during this band's illustrious career.
Being that the four songwriters are so strong, it's almost a miracle
that the guys never developed inflated egos, and managed to stay
together as long as they did. One listen to their very first album
shows, to some extent, most of their styles and trademarks to a degree
of overkill. That's o.k., though. They needed to show off to the world
what they could pull off, and they weren't afraid by the fact that they
weren't known by anyone yet.
Because these guys are going in every conceivable direction, the overall
songs by themselves tend to suffer a bit. It's a bit hard to appreciate
this record on a track by track basis, yet instead, you should listen
for its emotion and energy and even that can be a bit overwhelming at
times. The two lead off tracks are undoubtedly the strongest. The only
song to survive in terms of memorability is the first song Keep
Yourself Alive, which, not ironically is the most simple, straight
forward thing here. The only other time where they achieve such a
distinction is the follow up track, the much more melodic and slowed down
Doing All Right.
Once we get passed these two songs, things get a bit weird. Just look
at many of the song titles and you can almost guess what the atmosphere
will be for many of these tracks. Songs such as My Fairy King,
Seven Seas of Rhye and Great King Rat all come across as
simply a bit too much. It's as if they're trying to combine rock and
roll with dungeons and dragons, or something. Had the band not been so
well-tuned and powerful, it would have come across as laughable.
Fortunately, though, the tracks are so impressive in their arrangements,
that the silliness is easily forgiven.
Other tracks such as Jesus and Liar have their strengths,
but seem as though they would be more at home in an Andrew Lloyd Weber
musical as opposed to on a rock and roll album. Then, when drummer
Roger Taylor takes the lead on his track Modern Times Rock 'n'
Roll, it's a bit hard not to laugh through it since what was
modern in 1973 is pretty laughable now.
Had they continued in this vein, they would have never made it very far
at all. Fortunately, they were able to take many of the styles and
directions and ideas and fine tune them over the career to be much more
focused and therefore much more powerful. You have to give them credit
for showing the world just what they were capable of doing, though.
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