The album contained both original Oldfield compositions as well as two cover versions of pieces recorded by other bands ("Arrival" by ABBA and "Wonderful Land" by The Shadows).
Though only reaching number twelve on the German album charts, the album became the best-selling album of 1981 in Germany.[2]
The longest tracks on the album are "Taurus I" and the title track, "QE2", lasting 10 minutes and 7 minutes respectively. Some years later The Shadows responded to Oldfield's cover of "Wonderful Land", by releasing a cover of Oldfield's "Moonlight Shadow". The cover songs were released as singles.
The album was the first Oldfield album to feature Maggie Reilly as a collaborator. Some tracks on the album feature vocals sung through vocoder. "Conflict" has an excerpt from J. S. Bach’s "Badinerie" (the last part of Bach's Orchestral Suite No. 2 in B Minor). The lyrics for "Celt" were written by Tim Cross.
The album and its title track were named after the then 11-year-old Cunard Lineocean linerQueen Elizabeth 2. The album cover design appears to be a close-up of the side of the ship, complete with Plimsoll Line in the lower left corner. The first pressing even had a porthole cut out in the sleeve. The inside of the original foldout LP sleeve featured a schematic of one of the Queen Elizabeth 2's decks as well as a stylised picture of her engine; these have not been reprinted in later reissues, except for the 2012 reissue by Mercury Records on CD and LP, which reinstates all the elements of the original artwork with the exception of the cut-out porthole.
On the original vinyl label of the album, the title piece, "QE2" is listed as two tracks, "QE2" by Oldfield/Hentschel and "QE2 Finale" by Oldfield, but gives their running time as a single piece.
The album was re-released by Mercury Records on 30 July 2012. This came as part of a deal in which Oldfield's Virgin albums were transferred to the label. It was released on the same day as Platinum and a year after the last Universal reissue of Incantations.
The first disc is the original recording remastered with bonus material, and the second disc (available in the deluxe edition) is a live concert recorded at the time of the album's original release. The concert was recorded in April 1981 in Essen during Oldfield's European Adventure Tour.
