JAZZ

This is the last of the Queen 5 star albums. Some people would argue with this saying that it was the beginning of their commercial era while others would say that "The Game" was the last great album. Though "The Game" was good, it wasn't a masterpiece and not groundbreaking or risky, it was actually quite a safe album.

In "Jazz" (which is actually more focused on heavy rock than jazz), there are still plenty of excellent risks taken here. Opening the album with "Mustafa" definitely threw a lot of people off. But I thought it was genius and quite a showcase for Freddy's amazing voice. I love the track and I have no religious affiliation, so it has nothing to do with that, it's just an amazing song with quite a excellent guitar accompaniment. There is still quite a variety here with the rockers "Bicycle Race" and "Fat Bottom Girls", the heavy rockers "If You Can't Beat Them" and "Dead on Time", the showcase pieces "Let Me Entertain You" and "Only Seven Days", the lounge jazz influenced "Dreamers Ball", the infectious groove of "Fun It", the trademark harmonies of "Leaving Home Ain't Easy" and the progressive sounds of "More of That Jazz".

It's true there is not a lot of prog on here, and that is it's only shortcoming. The thing that makes this progressive and still a high rating album is the riskiness of the variety of the songs here, and that honestly was the reason I loved Queen so much back in the day. I was in it for not just the showmanship of the band, but the variety and how well they pulled every thing off the way they did. When Queen does a song sounding like it's from the 40s or a song that pays homage to the punk movement, they do it well and they do it right. And they always did it well back then, before disco took over and pushed it's way into Queen's music as they attempted to become the Bee Gees (Okay maybe that's a bit harsh).

Anyway, I still rate this as 5 stars even if the proginess was not so evident here, the prog in this album for me is in the effective use of dynamic, variety and the "glam-rock" side of prog.