Project 1001: Sheer Heart Attack by Queen

Here I stand (here I stand) / Look around, around, around, around, around / But you won't see me / Now I'm here (now I'm here) / Now I'm there (now I'm there)

May 12, 2025

I had listened to lots of Queen over lots of years before I listened to Sheer Heart Attack in its entirety. And when I finally got around to it, I recognized something truly special. I think it is one of the most straightforward rock records in their canon.

Queen are one of my favorite bands ever. I always like them. But after their historic performance at Live Aid in 1985, I fell in love with them. They are bombastic, funny, heavy, and theatrical; tempered and enhanced simultaneously by a sophisticated pop sensibility that makes it all accessible to just about any music fan.

Freddi Mercury is unquestionably one of the best front men to ever strut across a stage. Maybe the finest. I have a hard time coming up with anyone better. He’s not just macho posturing and theatrical bravura. His amazing voice asserts itself everywhere on the album.

Brian May’s immediately recognizable guitar sound is one of the most distinctive in all of music. He populates the album with plentiful appealingly intricate guitar leads and heavily melodic riffs.

Roger Taylor’s lead vocal on “Tenement Funster” makes for an interesting contrast with Freddie Mercury’s powerful voice on the other tracks. This is a track you should immediately track down if you’re unfamiliar with it.

“Killer Queen” the big song here, but my favorite is probably “Now I’m Here.” And “Brighton Rock” is a proper kick-off to a rockin’ album.

For my money, one of the best rock albums of the mid-1970s. My rating:

An interesting note about the track “Stone Cold Crazy”, a song credited to all four members of the band even if Mercury wrote it before joining Queen. Many consider it to be influential on the thrash genre. Metal Hammer calls it the first thrash metal song.1 Ultimate-guitar.com says it is sometimes considered the first thrash song.2 Brian May himself told Guitar World that people tell him the song was the “birth of thrash.”3 Metallica has famously covered the song and James Hetfield teamed with Tony Iommi and Queen to play the track at the Freddie Mercury tribute concert.

Rolling Stone’s initial review in 1975 was only three stars. They liked it with reservations:

Queen knows its stuff but they haven’t yet managed to approach the stunning flamboyance they displayed on “Liar” and “Keep Yourself Alive,” the best tracks on the first album, Queen, much less show any noticeable development since their promising beginning. And like 10 c.c., which the band sometimes resembles, Queen tends to confuse coyness with profundity and to go for resolution to the lyrical non sequitur. If there’s no meaning (there isn’t), if nothing follows (it doesn’t), if you can’t dance to it (it would seem that you can’t), Sheer Heart Attack is still, like its two predecessors, a handsomely glossy construction. If it’s hard to love, it’s hard not to admire: This band is skilled, after all, and it dares.4

Retrospective reviews tend to offer more enthusiastic praise like from Back Seat Mafia’s 2016 lookback:

Sometimes when a band gets it right, the results can blow their previous work clean out of the water. Sheer Heart Attack was the first album where Queen got it unarguably right, despite it being still consisting of elements of hard rock, prog and glam, this time they were blended in such a way that they all complemented each other rather than fought for supremacy. Best of all, the majority of the ogre, fairy and wise old man lyrical guff was dispensed with and between them Queen had written a varied selection of pop-rock songs, something which would become their forte throughout the rest of their career.5

Reviewing the album in 2007, the BBC declared, “The album remains a perfect example of their baroque and roll.”

In 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, John Lewis wrote:

After flirtations with funk, opera, and electro, it is easy to forget Queen were a fantastic hard rock band: as heavy as Sabbath, as dense as Zeppelin, as clever as Cream. Sheer Heart Attack was their breakthrough on both sides of the Atlantic, courtesy of guitarist Brian May’s gothic rock and singer Freddie Mercury’s flamboyant pop.

Lewis went on to describe the most famous song on the album:

The centerpiece is Queen’s breakthrough single “Killer Queen,” a delightfully bitchy rock masterpiece that tells the tale of a high-class call girl, a flamboyant juxtaposition of high and low culture that seemed to define the singer’s complex public persona.6

Enjoy and listen without prejudice.
“And just remember, different people have peculiar tastes”
~ Lou Reed

Cheers!

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Charts

• Peak on Billboard 200 album chart: #127
• Singles on Billboard Hot 100 chart: “Killer Queen”, #128
• RIAA certification: Gold | November 18, 19759

Released on November 8, 1974. Here’s what else was happening:

Pop Culture

• Number one song: “You Haven’t Done Nothin” by Stevie Wonder10
• Number one album: So Far by Crosby, Still, Nash & Young11
• Number one movie: The Longest Yard by Robert Aldrich12
• Most watched TV programs: All in the Family, Sanford and Son, Chico and the Man, The Jeffersons, M*A*S*H13
• NYT bestseller, fiction: Centennial by James Michener14
• NYT bestseller, non-fiction: All the President’s Men by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward15

Some other albums released that day

• Elton John's Greatest Hits by Elton John

• Man of Miracles by Styx

• Nightlife by Thin Lizzy

• Saturnight by Cat Stevens

• Stormbringer by Deep Purple16

Sport

• Nov 6 Dodger Mike Marshall is 1st relief pitcher to win Cy Young Award.
• Nov 13 Dodgers Steve Garvey wins NL MVP.
• Nov 17 Bonnie Bryant becomes the only left-handed player in history to win an LPGA Tour event; scores a 3-stroke victory in the Bill Branch Golf Classic in Fort Myers, Florida.17

Notable Births

• Nov 2 Nelly, American rapper (Country Grammar, Nellyville), born in Austin, Texas.
• Nov 5 Ryan Adams, American musician, singer and songwriter, born in Jacksonville, North Carolina.
• Nov 11 Leonardo DiCaprio, American Oscar-winning actor (The Departed, Inception, The Wolf of Wall Street), born in Los Angeles, California.18

Historical Events

• 08 Nov 1974 Carol DaRonch Escapes Ted Bundy: In a remarkable act of survival, Carol DaRonch narrowly escapes attempted abduction by serial killer Ted Bundy in Salt Lake City, Utah. Her quick thinking and resistance help her avoid becoming another victim of one of America's most notorious serial killers.
• 11 Nov 1974 Maria Callas' Legendary Final Public Performance: Operatic soprano Maria Callas, one of the most celebrated and influential classical singers of the 20th century, made her final public appearance in Sapporo, Japan. This moment marked the end of an extraordinary career that revolutionized opera performance and interpretation.
• 12 Nov 1974 South Africa Suspended from UN General Assembly: On November 12, 1974, the United Nations General Assembly voted to suspend South Africa due to its discriminatory apartheid policies. This significant diplomatic action was a strong international condemnation of the racist system of institutionalized racial segregation and white supremacy that had been enforced in South Africa since 1948. The suspension marked a critical moment in the global struggle against racial discrimination and highlighted the international community's rejection of apartheid.19

Notable Deaths

• Nov 4 Bert Patenaude, American soccer forward (4 caps; scorer of first hat-trick in World Cup history, 1930), dies at 65.
• Nov 8 Ivory Joe Hunter "The Baron of the Boogie", American R&B singer, piano player, and songwriter (“All State Boogie”, "Since I Met You Baby"), dies of lung cancer at 60.
• Nov 13 Karen Silkwood, American nuclear lab technician and labor union activist killed in a car crash under suspicious circumstances at 28.20