Queen
Jazz

THE REVIEW

If you ask a music critic what one of the most criticized, underrated, and hated albums in the history of music criticism is, they will surely answer Jazz by Queen. Let's just say that this time they are not entirely wrong, although Jazz is still a good LP perhaps created with too much cunning and too little creativity...

After the brilliant News Of The World, Queen decided to promote the new album with a bang, organizing an extravagant party with fire eaters and other bizarre characters. But it's the release of the single "Bicycle Race / Fat Bottomed Girls" that inflames the critics, mainly due to the nude woman on the cover. To be honest, "Fat Bottomed Girls" isn't a masterpiece, but it's an ear-catching song without too many textual pretensions, while "Bicycle Race" is a very beautiful song with two music videos made ad hoc (one censored and one that actually shows naked girls having a cycling race, as the song says). But the real "MASTERPIECE" of this album is certainly the FABULOUS "Don't Stop Me Now", which may make those who don't like choruses wrinkle their noses, but this in no way detracts from the excellent quality of the song, which is the usual Queen stadium anthem à la "We Are The Champions" and "We Will Rock You".

And where do we place the rest of the album? Let's face it, Jazz is not as evil as everyone says because all the songs are good, there isn't one that dominates over another (as happened instead in News Of The World where "Spread Your Wings" was superior to almost all of side A and B!).
"Mustapha" is the first track, and it's a very peculiar song where our Freddie sings in a language... Arabic-Persian... maybe! The problem is that certain fragments of the song aren't even Arabic, furthermore, besides having an Arabic style, the piece highlights May's usual guitar which turns "Mustapha" into a great rock piece!
"Fat Bottomed Girls" is a song, as we said before, easy to listen to and with a banal text, but it's not bad!
"Jealousy" is a slow song where Mercury and his piano intone a sad melody, which however makes this song very moving, even though technically very cheesy...
"Bicycle Race" is a very rhythmical song, where halfway through you can even hear bicycle bell noises (the song is called "Bicycle Race", what did you expect?)!
"If You Can't Beat Them" is a beautiful song with a carefree rhythm but at the same time quite hard rock.
"Let Me Entertain You" is an unpretentious song but a bit better than "Fat Bottomed Girls", also because it was designed specifically to open concerts, later replaced by "One Vision".
"Dead On Time" is good clean Hard Rock, where at the end of the song you can also hear the noise of a storm, recorded live from a real storm by our Brian.
"In Only Seven Days" has a short text where there is a noticeable intense desire to have some freedom from the work commitments of the entire week, and it's written by a great Deacon.
"Dreamers Ball" is a tasteful ballad where Freddie's voice is very sensual!
"Leaving Home Ain't Easy" is the only vocal work by Brian present in the album, and it's really good! A very beautiful ballad that in some aspects resembles "Long Away" (track from the previous album).
We've come to "Don't Stop Me Now", the brightest gem of Jazz, a rhythmic, rocking song with a thrilling Freddie with his high notes and a stunning Brian, especially in the mid-song solo.
"More Of That Jazz" is a decent classical hard rock song, composed and sung by Roger, which for a few seconds recaps various pieces of other Jazz tracks, an apt conclusion for a contradictory album, good but without pretensions... not even brilliant but certainly better than the later Queen albums of the '80s.