Every Queen Album Ranked Worst To Best
9. Queen
1st studio album (1973); UK #24 UK; US #83
The members of Queen recorded their first album during the downtime hours of a London studio, meaning they would work their magic after the paying artists had already left. Clearly, someone saw in them what the rest of the world would eventually see - though it would still take a while to find a label interested in putting the record out.
In an age where every new release by an A-list artist comes with 30 songs that all sound the same, it's refreshing to go through Queen's albums, each with under a dozen heterogeneous songs. The band's self-titled debut got the ball rolling on that tradition - every tune is its own thing, and they all provide a nice taster of what the band was capable of, even with limited resources. After all, it's a bit ambitious of newcomers to put out a stadium-rock album when they haven't conquered any stadiums yet, but Queen were always ahead of even their own game.
Key Tracks: Keep Yourself Alive; Doing Alright; Liar
Fun Fact: The song My Fairy King was inspired by a fantasy world Freddie had created with his sister when they were younger; after the lyric 'Mother Mercury, look what they've done to me' was penned (in reference to their mother), Farrokh 'Freddie' Bulsara changed his stage name to Freddie Mercury, and the rest was history.