Elements Of A Great Yes Album

[John Vehadija]

I was wondering what are your favorite elements of a great Yes album

I will do a poll but don't know if it's going to be accurate

[Homemade Parachute]

I was going to go with “Album concept/lyrics", but that would probably disqualify a few of my favourites… My top two (not the same as "most listened to", mind you) are Close to the Edge and 90125, which are also kind of opposites in some ways, but both feature musical ideas and arrangements that I take as "defining" of what a Yes album could be: the most successful long-form proggy version, and the most successful reinvention of that sound within a contemporary framework. Both sound like (not the same as "are", mind you) wholly-invested bands laying out a manifesto for a different kind of sound or album, and both whole-heartedly achieve that and more.

- Solos/jamming: less of that, please. 1/4 of the original Union Live was solos, obviously most of 9012Live, and I'll never need to hear Whitefish/13 minutes of The Fish again, thanks…
- Song Length: if an idea gets actually developed, that's fun, but a whole bunch of stitched together sections are just short songs (also fine and fun). Thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird or thirteen ways of looking at thirteen birds?
- Your favourite players - sure, except my favourite players (in a bunch of bands) have put out bum albums, and I like Union, regardless of who's even playing there. Wakeman is great when playing piano or organ, less so when using 80s synth defaults…
- Mixing/mastering - look, I'm just playing everything at 128kbs through crappy iPhone headphones, so what do I know here? I'll still take the muddy sound of Yessongs over almost anything.

[John Vehadija]

Great answers

[Gilly Goodness]

All of the above?

Jon or Juano's soaring voice
Steve's corkscrew guitar (always twisting,always turning)
Chris' melodic bass
The dreamy keys
The poetic/nonsense lyrics
Roger's album cover
Bruford's snappy drumming
Geoff's tweets
Moraz' poodle haircut
Rick's lame humour

So much to enjoy

[luna65]

Yeah I can't just vote for one thing. The top two things would be album concept/lyrics and musical composition.

[John Vehadija]

Added 'all of the above' option lol

[Susanne]

Yeah I can't just vote for one thing. The top two things would be album concept/lyrics and musical composition.

The same two are also essential for me. The others are not so critical, for my preferences.

[Ash Armstrong]

Musical composition, first and last.