Queen is by far one of, if not, the most iconic bands of all time. They created albums and hits that will continue to live in our minds for years to come, and even the song Bohemian Rhapsody, which is widely considered to be the greatest song of all time. Like every band though, they had to start somewhere, and their start was… interesting.

Their first album had an incredibly creative name that really shows the true artistry that the band could create. Their debut album dawned the name Queen and kicked off their iconic music career. The album didn’t exactly reflect the quality of their future albums, but I definitely wouldn’t say it’s bad, just very weird.

Queen is a mix of a few good songs and the rest are just strange or showing their age. Of course, the bar is set a bit lower with it being their first album, but it’s hard to not expect more from one of the greatest bands ever.

I would say that the highlights of this album were the songs Doing All Right and Jesus, which I’d give both an 8/10.

Jesus and Doing All Right accomplish the same thing, and that’s creating the classic Queen sound. Jesus has great instrumentals and has a fairly long solo from Brian May. It’s simple, but its simplicity really helps bump it up. Doing All Right is probably the most well known song from this album, and for good reason. The opening is beautiful, and despite a weird tempo change, the rock portion is great.

There were a couple of decent but weird songs like Mad the Swine and Great Rat King, but none that I would really call great. 

A common pattern I found with this album was just straight up weird songs. The strangest of the bunch is by far My Fairy King. The vocals are high the whole way through and the instrumental is just strange, it’s weirdly paced, and all of these things come together into the weirdest song I’ve ever heard. I think the high vocals are implying that you need to be high to enjoy this song. It is by far the worst song on this album, no question. 3/10.

One thing that this album did do is show all the different things that makeup Queen’s sound. There are songs that show off Roger Taylor’s drum skills, more rocky heavy songs that let Brian May shred on the guitar, and songs that show Freddie’s more raspy voice that we would see in songs such as We Will Rock You. The only thing we don’t get a whole lot of is bass, which is understandable seeing as they were struggling to find a bass player before they found John Deacon. 

This whole album is just very strange. It seems very experimental, which is understandable, but also leads to some of the worst and weirdest Queen songs in existence. There’s a level of respect that does come with the album, but it doesn’t take it very far. I would say this is still one of their worst albums. But hey, you gotta start somewhere.