Queen wasn’t immediately a success upon their debut. On July 6, 1973, Freddie Mercury, Brian May, Roger Taylor, and John Deacon released Queen’s first-ever single, “Keep Yourself Alive,” in the U.K.
The song did not chart upon its release and was largely ignored. That held true in both the U.K. and the U.S. upon its release in the latter location. According to Queen biographer Mark Hodkinson, “[o]n five separate occasions EMI’s pluggers attempted to secure it space on [Britain’s Radio 1] play list” but were denied each time because the record took “too long to happen”.
The track, which appeared on Queen’s self-titled debut album, is the band’s only single to not chart in the U.K.
In a 2021 video, May, who penned the track, talked about how he got the idea for the song.
“I wasn’t very sure that I was a songwriter, but I just sort of had this idea. Strange enough, the lyrics to ‘Keep Yourself Alive’ are meant to be kind of a comment. They’re meant to be slightly ironic,” he said. “But I learned very early on through this song it’s very difficult to be ironic in a song because people take it at face value.”
“Basically, everyone always did thought ‘Keep Yourself Alive’ was a jolly song about how great it is to be alive,” May continued, “but it’s actually more about asking the question, ‘Is there more to life than this?’”
Brian May Recalls Recording Queen’s “Keep Yourself Alive”
The group first recorded the track at De Lane Lea Studios, May told BBC Radio 1 in 1983. That recording of the track, which was not the version used as the single, “has something which the single never had,” May said.
Queen was “pressured” to re-record the song and the result, May believed, was “pretty awful.” Years later, the group recorded the track again. The result, May said, was “a bit more true to the original” version. However, May believed that the “magic of the moment can never be recaptured.”
“I still think that the De Lane Lea one had that certain sort of magic, so I was never really happy,” he said. “As it turned out no one else was ever really happy either and we kept remixing it. We thought that it’s the mix that’s wrong. We kept remixing and there must have been, at least, seven or eight different mixes by different groups of people.”
“Eventually we went in and did a mix with Mike Stone, our engineer, and that’s the one that we were in the end happiest with. That’s the one we put out,” May continued. “But, to my mind ‘Keep Yourself Alive’ was never really satisfactory. Never had that magic that it should have had.”
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