On Jazz, Freddie Mercury absolutely piles on the pop culture references in his lyrics. Seriously, see how many you can count. Make it a fun game with friends. If you feel in the mood for pointless fun, then Jazz is your ideal soundtrack anyway, as it’s by far Queen‘s silliest album. I certainly don’t need to explain “Fat Bottomed Girls” or “Bicycle Race,” but additional tracks like the opener “Mustapha” (which if someone called offensive I wouldn’t argue) cements this current era of Queen as by far their most confident.

Probably to a fault. Jazz is as eclectic as Queen generally are but after A Day at the Races the cohesiveness of their freewheeling, genre-hopping experiments started to fall apart. Just having an idea felt like a passing grade for an album track at this point, and albums started to have less and less deep cuts as the non-singles felt neglected. “Dreamer’s Ball” is a fine example, another one of Queen’s attempts at incorporating classical jazz pop, yet the hook is weak and the antiquated atmosphere unconvincing in comparison to a song like “The Millionaire Waltz.”

Jazz is still an enjoyable album overall, the eccentricity always shines through and not to an obnoxious level (unless you unilaterally loathe Queen’s rambunctiousness for whatever reason) due to the fact no songs fall completely flat on their face like we would see much more often in the ’80s. But there’s still not enough inclination to go beyond the singles here. “In Only Seven Days” is the closest to a non-single having a permanent melody.