QUEEN

"Keep Yourself Alive" is the opening track of Queen. Queen's first album track (and first ever single) was immediately a killer shot. Although the single flopped, the song contains one of Mays classic riffs. Freddie's vocals are amazing on this song. In fact this song is kind of a blueprint for Queen's wellknown style of the mid-seventies. There are the multi-layered guitar parts and the fantastic vocal harmonies together in a combination with the highly succesful songwriting of the band! Before Brians guitar army joins the band, an entertaining drum solo by power drummer Roger Taylor can be heard.

The second song is Doin' All Right. The audience may think that Queen takes back some power to move over to a little ballad but they are wrong. The song starts like a ballad indeed but after a few moments it explodes in some very hard guitar and drum parts. Rogers drumming in particular is really awsome on this track, he proves allready he's an all-round drummer.Interesting fact: the writing of this song dates back to the Smile days. Smile was the band of May and Taylor before Freddie Mercury replaced Smile bassplayer/vocalist Tim Staffel and joined Queen. May and Staffel wrote the song together and performed it a few times in the late sixties. A recorded version of the song by Smile does exist!

"Great King Rat" and "My Fairy King", both written by Mercury, are both epic songs."Great King Rat" is a real sing-along-song about a dirty old man who died of syphillis at forty-four years old.The intro to this song is an amazing but short guitar showcase by May.

"My Fairy King" seems to be a fairytale. The song's got lyrics of mythical contents and seems to be creating an ideal world. A very imaginative song! Both Freddie and Roger make use of their high voices. The song goes up and donw, slow and fast, leads from one section into the other...you'll never get bored.

"Liar" begins with a drum intro followed by a series of classic May riffs. Roger keeps drumming amazingly all the way through the song. Then it's time for Freddies ever changing vocals.In the beginning they breath out a quiet mood, and they change into more aggressive vocals in the chorusses. Brians solo is so well constructed! It's surely an eclectic song, it can even be called an early prog-classic in my opinion. We can't afford to forget Deacons moment supreme, his basssolo at the end of the song is mindblowing.

"The Night Comes Down" is more like a ballad.Very short drum solo followed by Brians fast acoustic guitar pickings.The lyrics can be called psychedelic.At the end brians fast acoustic lead returns and serves as a basis for some spacy guitar and drums parts.An early Queen classic.

"Modern Time Rock 'N' Roll" is kind of an unusual Queen song i think.It's hard to define as a style. Is it an aggressive form of hardrock or maybe even protopunk? The song is sung by whiskeyvoice Roger Taylor. he did a fine job.

"Son and daughter" fits nicely into the first Queen album.Freddies voice seems to be a little distorted.Brian May fills the gaps between the lines with beautiful harmonic guitar parts. 'I want you to be a women' is the main theme of the song.

"Jesus" is musically a very nice song, but the lyrics are often critisized for the same reason as Mel Gibson's Passion of Christ(2004), it's too literal.The music of the first part of the son is well written for the subject of Jesus, it's a bit based on non- profane music. The middlesection is a smashing guitar and drum jam, there's even a trumpet to interact with the other instruments!

"Seven Years of Rhye" is the instrumental of the more famous 1974 version from QueenII.I think this version is a filler, it should've been developped at the time to be on QueenI.

The album was produced by Trident Studios producer John Anthony who also produced albums by Genesis and Van der Graaf Generator (also the debut albums of both bands).Tech on this album was Roy Thomas Baker who led the band, in co- operation with Queen, to mythical proportions with Sheer Heart Attack and A Night At The Opera. Queen was the first album of the world famous british phenomenon Queen and one of the most underestimated debut albums