Queen 7: Jazz

We’re guessing that anyone who got into Queen on the back of “We Will Rock You” and “We Are The Champions” would have been sorely confused by the first track on Jazz. While it does eventually incorporate some trademark Brian May licks, the majority of “Mustapha” is an operatic exploration evoking Allah and sung confidently by Freddie Mercury, mostly in Arabic and Persian.

Of course, they might have bought the album on the basis of the first single, which paired the equally intricate “Bicycle Race” with the unlikely singalong “Fat Bottomed Girls”. Around our way these songs were often played back to back a la the aforementioned openers from News Of The World—and considering each song references the other, it made sense—but they don’t appear on the album that way. Instead, “Fat Bottomed Girls” is the second song on side one, followed by the moody piano ballad of “Jealousy”, and only after that do we hear “Bicycle Race”. (To confuse things further, a poster of about 70 nude women on bicycles came with early copies of the album, which likely distracted those bewildered teenage boys for the duration of their youth.) “If You Can’t Beat Them” is a straightahead rocker, and proof yet again that John Deacon wrote some terrific songs for this band. “Let Me Entertain You” recalls the heavy sound of their first albums, even if the sentiment in the lyric, thanks to the mildly campy delivery, tries to hard to convince.

The hard rock continues on “Dead On Time” with a rapid-fire, tongue-twisting chorus and a closing thunderclap effect that’s as startling as it is silly. “In Only Seven Days” borders on yacht rock with its romantic chord changes—one of which will feature four tracks later—and acoustic guitars (courtesy of Deacon, who wrote it), while “Dreamers Ball” is more of a lazy New Orleans blues. That makes “Fun It” a real anomaly, being extremely disco-influenced an intentionally inane; they would do better on their next real album. We can blame Roger Taylor for this one, though Freddie must have liked it since he sings half the vocals. Brian sings his sentimental heart out over trilling acoustics on “Leaving Home Ain’t Easy”, even the part in the middle where the “wife” responds. All this is forgotten once “Don’t Stop Me Now” kicks in, however. This song was criminally ignored in the U.S. for the better part of 25 years, which is insane because it just might be the greatest Queen song of all time. This makes the closing “More Of That Jazz”, another one-man-band demo from Roger, all the more anticlimactic, especially when the mix suddenly weaves in earlier snippets of the album before returning to the song proper.

The songs on Jazz all over the place, touching on virtually every known genre except jazz itself. While it has its moments, and the bad parts aren’t necessarily bad, it simply doesn’t hold together as an album. Still, it’s further evidence that there never has been another band that sounds like Queen. (The first reissue added only modern remixes of “Bicycle Race” and “Fat Bottomed Girls”, while the one twenty years later included an instrumental of the former, the single edit of the latter, an alternate mix of “Don’t Stop Me Now” with too many guitars, an early take of “Dreamers Ball”, and a live “Let Me Entertain You” from a 1981 Montreal concert released on video and CD a few years before.)

Queen Jazz (1978)—3
1991 Hollywood reissue: same as 1978, plus 2 extra tracks
2011 remaster: same as 1978, plus 5 extra tracks