Jazz
Queen
1978/1991: Hollywood Records HR-61062-2
My sister (a few years older than me) had this album while we were in our teens, and I came to know and enjoy it, albeit with some uncertainty about its uneven quality. I didn’t have a problem with its unharmonized mix of rocking tracks and gentler pieces, nor with its definitely ambiguous sexuality, but I didn’t know what to make of the coexistence of tracks like the weak and maudlin “Jealousy” and the fierce if irrelevant “Mustapha” on the same album as camp like “Dreamers Ball” and punchy grit like “Fun It.”
Still, all of my confusion about the album generally receded in awe upon hearing the album-in-condensed-form that occurs near the end of “More of That Jazz;” to this day the only thing I’ve ever heard that approaches that stroke of brilliant self-referential artistry is the audio/video pastiche that introduces the Eurythmics Greatest Hits video (and which pads the gaps between videos therein). That this solid audial compression was done in 1978 still amazes me, because it was exactly what could best express the album’s highlights in just a few seconds and didn’t require anything more than an exceptionally astute juxtaposition. Whoever did that, I consider you right up there with David A Stewart in terms of artistic production of pop music.
Comments © 2005 Mark Ellis Walker, except as noted, and no claim is made to the images and quoted lyrics.