{"id":484047,"date":"2026-03-19T13:15:13","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T13:15:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/484047\/"},"modified":"2026-03-19T13:15:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T13:15:13","slug":"the-queen-album-brian-may-doesnt-want-to-listen-to","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/484047\/","title":{"rendered":"The Queen album Brian May doesn’t want to listen to"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Queen<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Carl Lender)<\/p>\n

Thu 19 March 2026 9:13, UK <\/p>\n

The reality is, you will rarely be happy with the work you first made years after you made it. You don\u2019t have to be a globe-trotting band like Queen<\/a> to know that. Just take a quick look into your old sketchbooks, notepads or even school work and find yourself enduring an unbearable level of cirnginess. <\/p>\n

Every band usually needs time to work out the bugs before settling on a particular sound. Outside of a few exceptions, anyone who has ever tried to make it in the music industry either spends their first record trying to figure out what the hell they want to sound like or ends up making something more than a little bit embarrassing so they can get their musical sea legs. <\/p>\n

Although Queen came to the world fully formed on their debut record, Brian May still thinks that listening to the album these days is a little bit rough on the ears. And that\u2019s a natural evolution for most performers and musicians. <\/p>\n

Compared to their contemporaries, though, Queen had the sheer force behind their music down to a tee on their debut. While \u2018Keep Yourself Alive\u2019 was as straight-ahead as they would ever get, the power behind the guitars and especially the vocal harmonies were evident immediately, almost like they were trying to create a rock and roll choir with their voices.<\/p>\n

There are even a few traces of where they would go later on the album as well. Ballads like \u2018Doing All Right\u2019 and \u2018The Night Comes Down\u2019 were the first look at their softer side, and while a track like \u2018Great King Rat\u2019 was a bit much for people to take in all at once, a song of that size and scope was enough to plant the seeds for what \u2018Bohemian Rhapsody\u2019<\/a> work go on to do a few albums later.<\/p>\n

While the band could cover a lot of bases, May thought that they were a master of none of them quite yet, telling Guitar World<\/a>, saying, \u201cOur major frustration was the sound of that first album, which we were never happy with. We were thrown into the studio and into a system which regarded itself as state of the art\u2026[but] they\u2019d all be dead and down. I remember saying to Roy Thomas Baker, \u2018This isn\u2019t really the sound we want, Roy.\u2019 And he said, \u2018Don\u2019t worry, we can fix it all in the mix.\u2019 Which, of course, is not the best way, is it?\u201d<\/p>\n

If this is what the rough-and-tumble Queen sounds like, though, it\u2019s hardly a downgrade by most other rock band standards. There are a handful of ramshackle moments like Roger Taylor\u2019s \u2018Modern Times Rock and Roll\u2019, but other spotty moments like the instrumental version of \u2018Seven Seas of Rhye\u2019 almost serve as a teaser for what they would do just one album later.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s not like May didn\u2019t already have his chops down. From the moment \u2018Keep Yourself Alive\u2019 starts, he has already developed an incredible sense of harmony, almost turning his entire guitar into a symphony during the solo section by overdubbing various harmony lines during the last few bars.<\/p>\n

Whereas Queen was a decent way of showing the group at their best, Queen II was probably more indicative of what the group was going for. Suddenly, the vocals sounded far more pronounced, the guitars were punchier, and the songs gave fans their first look at the musical giant they were becoming on tracks like \u2018Father to Son\u2019 and \u2018Ogre Battle\u2019.<\/p>\n

Queen may have been tied down due to the circumstances of the group\u2019s beginnings, but you\u2019d hardly notice it when listening to it. If anything, this was proof that even as a rough-around-the-edges rock and roll outfit, Queen were a rare breed that could take their songs in any direction they saw fit.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It might be that almost every single artist feels strange about their debut records. Even Nirvana, Arctic Monkeys, The Beatles and more would, by the latter stages of their career, look back at their first release and wince. Brian May is no different.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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