Release and Reception
EMI released "Keep Yourself Alive" as a single in the United Kingdom on 6 July 1973, a week before Queen hit the stores. A few months later, on 9 October 1973, Elektra Records released the single in the United States. However, "Keep Yourself Alive" received little radio airplay and was largely ignored on both sides of the Atlantic; it failed to chart in the either the UK or the US. According to Queen biographer Mark Hodkinson, although "n five separate occasions EMI's pluggers attempted to secure it space on play list", they were denied each time, reportedly because the record "took too long to happen". "Keep Yourself Alive" remains the only Queen single not to have charted in the UK.
The single received mixed reviews from the British music press. New Musical Express praised the "cleanly recorded" song, as well as the "ood singer", and quipped that if Queen "look half as good as they sound, they could be huge". The reviewer for Melody Maker felt that Queen " an impressive debut with a heavily phased guitar intro and energetic vocal attack"; however, he thought the song to be unoriginal, and unlikely to become a hit. On the other hand, Disc magazine's critic believed the single "should do well". The review praised "Keep Yourself Alive"'s drum solo, as well as its "attractively stilted, vaguely Hendrix-y lead riff". The South Yorkshire Times rated the single as "good"; the newspaper predicted that "f this debut sound from Queen is anything to go by, they should make very interesting listening in the future." In his album review of Queen for Rolling Stone magazine, Gordon Fletcher hailed "Keep Yourself Alive" as "a truly awesome move for the jugular".
Retrospectively, "Keep Yourself Alive" is cited as the highlight of Queen's superb debut album. Stephen Thomas Erlewine of Allmusic wrote that while Queen "too often . . . plays like a succession of ideas instead of succinct songs", "here is an exception to that rule — the wild, rampaging opener 'Keep Yourself Alive,' one of their very best songs". In 2008, Rolling Stone rated the song thirty-first on its list of "The 100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time". The magazine dubbed "Keep Yourself Alive" as "Brian May's statement of purpose: a phalanx of overdubbed guitars crying out in unison, with rhythm and texture from over-the-top effects. . . . an entire album's worth of riffs crammed into a single song."
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