Thanks Ron, hope you didn't mind me trashing it too much! As another channel says ona regular basis 'we all hear things differently' - and entry points into a band tend to be pretty important in the long run, so I totally get that! Cheers, JSB.
I was cooking off at an 103degree fever with flu the day this premiered on MTV and if you recall, they play the songs every hour on premier day. I was laying on my couch looking at the TV at a 90 degree offset and somewhat delusional due to the fever. They video has them upside down. I could not solve for this in my head as I was being woken up by this song hourly and I really thought I was dying. True story.
This song is the only one to have 32 different video versions. Every day for a month MTV released a new version of the video leading up to the final official video release.
Yes is absolutely amazing. I listem to them since the late 1970s. Under my favourite bands they range on second place behind the Beatles. Who needs the definition of progressive rock: there it is.
Everyone I've recommended this song to over the years has been blown away. The (near) a cappela in the beginning is amazing, and when the bass kicks in it only gets better. Yes is one of those bands that just knows how to create unreal songs again, and again, and again.
Massive prog rock and metal fan here, LOVE 'Leave It' (one of the all time great vocal arrangements, and SO catchy), and that album, and Big Generator. 80s Yes is the only Yes I like. 70s Yes sounds flat, dated, meandering and deadly dull to me. It's just a big bandwagon/sheep mentality thing, people see everyone else hating on 80s Yes (and Rush is the same), so they feel they have to hate on it as well. Not me....
Haha, well I'll grant you it's catchy (it's certainly been stuck in my head since recording this video and now I wish it would, ahem, leave it!). Generally I prefer the poppier side of prog (hence the reference to Asia) and thought 80s Yes might be up my street but no (I also have just two outlier Yes albums that I really like, in my case Drama and Fly from Here) . 80s Rush on the other hand, as I've covered before on the channel, is far and away my favourite era!
Please don't compare 80's YES to 80's Genesis. By the 80s, Phil Collins turned his band into a top 40 machine. This album was YES coming back to life in a new way. I was 15 when this came out. I started buying their entire catalog after this came out. Summer of 84 concerts that I saw were YES, Huey Lewis, David Gilmour, and Roger Waters. It was a great summer.
Haha, sorry Sean, if I touched a nerve there I didn't mean to - BUT as they're really the only two big prog bands to thrive, let alone survive, in the 80s, comparisons are inevitable! If it makes you feel any better this track absolutely pummels Whodunnit to death! Cheers, JSB.
@Act0rJSB No worries, Phil Collins was on MTV as much as Madonna back then. I wasn't really a part of the top 40 crowd. Do you remember when Tonight, tonight, tonight was a beer advertisement? Overexposure can ruin anything.
@@seanharrigan6365 didn't feel that way at the time, but growing up in a country with only two TV channels (we got a 3rd when I was 9) probably shielded me from some of the worst of the overexposure you faced to certain things. Tho hearing certain songs on the radio every 7 minutes was bad enough...!
This song is the only one to have 32 different video versions. Every day for a month MTV released a new version of the video leading up to the final official video release.
@@Act0rJSB The fun was to see what changed from day to day. Some days it was just one scene, other days it was stuff edited in a different order or added a different special effect. It would be great if whoever has these would re-release them all.
I used to see 80s Yes as a real step down from what they were capable of. I don't see it that way anymore, I love their 80s stuff. And actually, this particular song, I loved from the start. I can see why it would be hard to appreciate if you don't like 80s production though. Definitely give Gates of Delirium a listen. Relayer is probably my favourite Yes album. 💛
Thanks for commenting - it was definitely the production, not the song, that I didn't like. Gates of Delirium continues to wink at me...we shall see...!! Cheers, JSB.
Haha, thanks for checking it out Les, and yeah, what is RU-vid if not the world's biggest communal elevator (tho hopefully a less smelly one than Twitter...my goodness...!). ;-)
I always loved this song because of the video. Very simplistic and artsy. You are correct, the heavy hitting prog rock bands got stuck in the 80's and took a step back. King Crimson was the only band to really reinvent themselves in the 80's with the line up of Fripp, Bruford, Levin and Belew.
Haha, I certainly did not use the word 'best' in relation to Madonna...obviously if I thought that I would have listened to it a lot more than once in the past 30 years! ;-)
I liked the album when it came out, of course producer Trevor Horn (former Buggles and Yes musician) influenced the sound (listen also to his production of Frankie Goes To Hollywood). The album is mostly based on music written by Trevor Rabin, great musician and writer of movie scores, but indeed lacks a bit of the Yes magic. Still, great music.
Thanks Erick - I know they're basically two different versions of the band, but the contrast between the Horn-fronted Drama and this has to be one of the biggest shifts in sound any band has gone through - strange that he is one of the few common factors between the two!
Acapella, harmonies, staggered acapella harmonies, off beat drums, Trevor Rabin and Jon Anderson. Leave it, I think is a fabulous song. I remember this album being released. Then Big Generator. Another album you might not like?
It is called progressive rock. This song is better than Genesis in general after Peter Gabriel left. You may not be getting the lyrical content in context with the music. I am sad that you think this sucks. Because you are missing a lot of good music. The bass line and grove is awesome!
Haha, no need to be sad Charles, as long as you love it that's the most important thing! If you get a chance check out my 'prog and related' playlist, we may well have common ground on other things (likewise...we may not!). Cheers, JSB.
In a world not driven by the commercial interests of record companies, this album would have been released by the band Cinema and it would be an exemplar of a certain 80s sound. The problem is that while it is a skillfully made record, it relies far too much on musical cliches, most of which were introduced by Rabin. The original Yes up through Drama were far, far less likely to do that through the good the bad and the ugly of their career arc. It's like they intentionally went down a road of pure commercialism.Cliches appeal to a much larger audience because that's why they're cliches! But it does mean they are great, insightful or innovative. Merely an appealing clutch of cliches. It's why I don't much like Yes after the Drama album.
To be fair the 80s was a decade of pure commercialism from just about all corners. I also feel some of those 70s bands who happened to have huge success playing exactly the sort of music they wanted to play, at some point just felt that selling millions of copies was the natural order of things, and when sales started to slip they did anything to turn it around back to what they'd become accustomed to - some more successfully than others (be that in commercial OR artistic terms!).
Obviously music appreciation is subjective but I think this is an outstanding production of a song. There's not a lot that sounds like it which makes it unique especially with the creative vocals and the off timing in different parts. That whole album always felt hyper futuristic to me with it's production value.
This song is certainly indulgent but it's components are good. The groove--when it establishes itself--is excellent. The melodies are memorable. The production is exciting and--at times--overblown for good and bad. I think you are a YES fan who loves early YES. I came to the band with 90125 really and I far prefer this stuff to say, "I've Seen All Good People". I care about songs. That's where it begins and ends with me. I don't care about "dated" or "stuck in time" ideas about production. The production on "Owner of a Lonely Heart" is astounding and that song slaps.
I'm not really much of a Yes fan at all TBH (over the years I've mostly put this down to not being a fan of Jon Anderson's vocals, which explains why the Drama and Fly From Here albums DO work for me...but Heaven and Earth ruined that theory...!) but your point about this era being where you came in is vital. Our own personal biases shape how we hear things - and nobody can ever be wrong for liking something, while people CAN dislike things for the wrong reasons (like wanting to appear cool...fools!!). Cheers, JSB.
I can't believe I forgot about this song. I don't like that era of Yes, and I have a really hard time with the 80s in general, but I absolutely love this song. Similarly Genesis - a band that I LOVED through 1983's self-titled - immediately started sucking starting with the milquetoast Invisible Touch, and I could only stomach them on scattered songs thereafter. That might be the most disappointing arc of a band for me. Still, I appreciate the honesty. Subbed!
Welcome aboard - and glad to remind you of a small slice of the 80s that you did like! And I'll always call things how I see them, even when that makes me unpopular (tho generally I love 90% of stuff that makes it onto the channel in the first place!). Cheers, JSB.
Ha! Fun. As for this era ... There was a metric ton of crap produced in the eighties. But the big bands: Yes, Rush, Zeppelin, Super Tramp, etc ... They all produced amazing stuff even in the eighties. And yes, I love this song. :) Starship / Jefferson Starship is one of the big bands that lost their way and produced a big pile of crap. Madonna? Eh. She's a pop singer, so the odds of her stuff aging poorly is very high. :)
I will say of all the big 70s bands, for me Rush is the only one who made BETTER music in the 80s, but as you say some certainly dealt with the decade more gracefully than others! Obviously can't join you in the love for this song, but I@m glad (and not surprised) it has it's admirers! Probably shouldn't mention that I actually quite like We Built This City...so I won't...!! Cheers, JSB.
Incredible inventive music video, especially for the time. They released multiple different versions of the video. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-8-hJFoSgXfM.html
My experience with this song in the 80's was BLASTING the lead-up to it---Cinema---& then skipping to some other song on the album. I absolutely loved Cinema. Hated this song. Here's Cinema: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-qSRzlThuXmM.htmlsi=gILaNY-bZhkXzCnn
I've been listening to Yes since 1971 and the 70s were a phenomenal time for Yes fans. I thought the 80s Yes were pretty good but nowhere near as good as the 70s. With the exception of Drama.
Thanks John. Drama is a great album (hey, being an actor of COURSE I like Drama...!) and, like a few albums from 1980, seems to be from just before the '80s' really started, if you know what I mean!
For me, Relayer is their crowning achievement. It's Yes at their experimental peak. Gates is amazing, Sound Chaser is my favourite and To be Over is just gorgeous. So yes, you should give it a spin. But don't mess around with the cover art on that one - cause that too is a masterpiece.
to me it just seems a bit overly experimental, and as a whole there's just nothing really special about it. it's like a filler track honestly. definitely a b side in my opinion. not that i know what the rest of the album sounds like lol. i mean they tried to do some cool stuff with the panning. lots of left and right sounds to get that stereo imaging sort of thing going, but for me if it doesn't have a great melody, then it's not a great song. that's just kinda my preference though. the melody doesn't seem to really go anywhere in this.
Feel the same but there seems to be a (to me surprising) lot of love out there for this one - of course, they're not wrong to love it - and we're not wrong not to!
Thanks for the suggestions, have heard those first two albums, but Going for the One (despite me playing about with its cover art) needs a listen from me at some point for sure! JSB
If you think that this album is worse than "Open Your Eyes" or "Heaven and Earth", then you're either lying to make your point, or you really don't know a thing about music.
