Songfacts®:

• In playing card metaphors, we often hear about the queen of hearts, but rarely about the queen of spades, who in this song is bad news. She's a temptress, so sweet in her warm embrace, but she can turn cold quickly and bring you down.
  
  According to Styx keyboard player Dennis DeYoung, the song is about gambling addiction. Phrases in the lyrics like "your die is cast" and "turn of a card" indicate casino games like craps and blackjack.
• Dennis DeYoung sang lead on this one and wrote it with James Young, a guitarist and founding member of the group, making it a Young/DeYoung composition.
  
  Structurally, it's based on an earlier Styx song called "Suite Madame Blue." Young explained in a Songfacts interview: "'Queen Of Spades' is really lifting the concept or structure of 'Suite Madame Blue,' where we start out slow and then build to the big chorus. We play it in the key of B minor."
• "Queen Of Spades" is part of the Pieces Of Eight album, which includes "Blue Collar Man (Long Nights)" and "Renegade." By this time the band was building a huge fan base while confounding many critics who often labeled them pretentious.