A standout track (that most will know from Shaun of the Dead), and a chunk of experimental filler is what makes up Jazz. Credit to Queen for continuing to push for a new sound, be it with hard rock fundamentals or with that symphony-adjacent charm which worked for listeners of the time, the Freddie Mercury-fronted band did have a unique angle to their creative strokes. That’d appear across Jazz, an album which, true to the consistency Queen had in the studio, had a breakout hit and a collection of solid but sorely forgettable album tracks. Don’t Stop Me Now may be the very peak of the band’s work, but it’s shunted onto the latter moments of a B-side where some real dreck can be found. What the band struggles with here is how weightless their sound is. On previous releases it’s the guitar work of Brian May, weighty and often unnecessarily loud it may be, that gives each song a punchy tone. That’s lacking on a lot of Jazz, and it doesn’t sound like an intentional choice.
Take opening Jazz track, Mustapha, for instance. It’s the bassline that tries to hold the song together, tinny in its opener and then the burst from May comes through. But it’s such a clunky transition from one tone to another and feels a bit too reliant on the theatrical style which, at this point, had become a pastiche of itself for Queen. Follow that up with the predictable underscores of Fat Bottomed Girls, a song which cannot convince of its playfulness and instead sounds a bit more like a sluggish attempt at anthemic songwriting, like We Will Rock You without the stomp and clap instructions, is a dud. Nice moments can be found, though they feel a bit typical. Jealousy has some instrumental experimentation, more in the variety of instruments used than any tone taken, it’s the stock sentimentality that overwhelms Jazz. A shame, too, since the album features some excellent vocal layering for Mercury, who sounds to be in fantastic form here.
Bicycle Race, as memorable as it is, just features very little outside of a real desire to ride a bike. The I’m In Love With My Car of the album there, and that’s no compliment. At least If You Can’t Beat Them has the anthemic status which works so well for the band, even if they are playing the hits and doing little more than that with them. Follow that up with Let Me Entertain You and Queen are then onto some more suitable, yet predictable, songs. Jazz is scant when it comes to innovative tracks or instrumentally sound pieces of work, instead relying on what had, at this point, become a rock and roll tone which Queen had mastered and made everything they could of on News of the World. Sentimental attempts with In Only Seven Days are trialled, though it feels too lounge pop-like to have a more crushing impact, or even all that interesting an impression.
Jazz is Queen at their worst, but also their best. It’s a messy showcase of everything the band would do, often an album’s worth of thematics and material is condensed into just one song. It means liberties are taken with not the tempo of the song, but the pacing of their message, and it leaves a listener high and dry all too often. May’s guitar solo frequency here is pulled back, gracefully, but he still cuts through with some tonally poor choices. Dreamer’s Ball and the jovial tone it takes does not fit his style, but there it is all the same. Don’t Stop Me Now remains the shining light of this one, the sole track worth pulling from this release and repeatedly listening to. At least Jazz has that, the best Queen song around, although what it’s packaged with is far from their best material.
