The 'Leave It' Music Video Story

[soundchaser09]

something I never knew here, crazy amount of versions!

[luna65]

Yep. It's a fun piece of YesWestory.

[downbyariver]

Whelp, that's 32 minutes of my life I'll never get back.

Summary: 18 versions of the "Leave It" video were produced, all with same basic "band dressed in black suits standing in front of a white void singing upside down" concept. A bunch aired on MTV and were eventually part of a contest. After a while, they settled on Version 11 as the definitive version, which is what you would likely see if a retro music video channel aired it today, or as the first video result on YouTube.

Some of the other versions are not available online, and were never sold commercially. So, they may be lost to time. Winners of the contest were supposed to receive a videotape with all 18 versions back to back. No one with said tape has surfaced to date.

Miscellaneous comments: What should have been done was one video, but with members of various past Yes lineups included, only showing five people at any given time, but with people morphing into each other and doing a freeze frame for a few seconds whenever you get a lineup that was on an album, with the album cover (Upside down, of course) briefly replacing the white background before the white background is restoring and morphing continues.

Actually, the music video itself (Version 11, anyway) isn't that bad. After the video about the video, though, I have to say that my viewpoint has temporarily shifted from "Oh, that cool upside down video." to "For the love of God, no more.". Give me a few minutes to find my equilibrium.

I still love the song.

[pianozach]

Fascinating video about a music video.

I remember seeing perhaps three or four versions of the video back when it was first released. Maybe more.

Definitely Versions 1 and 11.

[luna65]

Note: Only the first two paragraphs of that are really a summary.

Okay but, like, I didn't need a summary - I've already seen it because I have my own copy from the trades. I figure that most everyone who hasn't seen it doesn't want to.

[downbyariver]

Okay but, like, I didn't need a summary - I've already seen it because I have my own copy from the trades. I figure that most everyone who hasn't seen it doesn't want to.

Well, I know *you* don't need a summary. You are actually the person I would ask for a summary if I didn't want to watch the video and could only ask one person for a summary.

However, I know for myself, when I see lengthy videos posted, or emailed to me, or whatever, I sometimes don't view them because I am listening to music or watching television while I'm web surfing, and don't want to interrupt what I am doing. I can read text all day, because that doesn't disrupt my background activity, but videos are always a matter of "Is this really worth pausing 'Close to the Edge' right in the middle?", or whatever.

So, I posted the summary on the assumption that some people are like me. Also, there may be others who are at work in an environment where earbuds or openly playing videos with sound are discouraged. Way back in the 20th century and early 21st century, I even knew people without working computer sound, although that seems to be a less common to almost non-existent problem these days.

Also, in theory, reading a summary is a time saver. I don't know how long it takes the average person to read two paragraphs, but it's got to be less than half an hour.

[Ash Armstrong]

Ugh! No thank you, to promotional music videos by anyone ever in the history of the multiverse, but especially no thank you to this.
What do they look like? Good grief!

[soundchaser09]

Ugh! No thank you, to promotional music videos by anyone ever in the history of the multiverse, but especially no thank you to this.
What do they look like? Good grief!

🤣 no to the Rabin era generally for you. I'm sure that Leave it in particular is everything about that period that you despise.

[kkleinschmidt]

I vaguely remember seeing the Owner video when it was new but I don't remember ever seeing Leave It and I certainly knew nothing about 18 (!) different versions (thankfully). MTV was fun for about 15 minutes when it first came out but I quickly got tired of it and stuff like this is the reason why. Interesting story though and thanks for sharing it soundchaser09!

[Ash Armstrong]

🤣 no to the Rabin era generally for you. I'm sure that Leave it in particular is everything about that period that you despise.

Pretty much.

[pianozach]

I vaguely remember seeing the Owner video when it was new but I don't remember ever seeing Leave It and I certainly knew nothing about 18 (!) different versions (thankfully). MTV was fun for about 15 minutes when it first came out but I quickly got tired of it and stuff like this is the reason why. Interesting story though and thanks for sharing it soundchaser09!

Funny about MTV. Pioneers in cable channel development. Changed how music was released, presented, created, and consumed.

They were all about Music Videos, then eventually abandoned the format when the novelty of just showing music videos had worn out.

[luna65]

Funny enough, last week this video was uploaded about "Leave It." But oof does this dude mangle names.