90125

Of all the pseudo-prog Yes that came after Going for the One, why does this one get hammered more than the rest? It's true, this is pop, but Yes pop is for the most part preferable to regular pop, at least to me. I'll take this over the Def Leppard's of the day anytime.

In full disclosure, this was one of my first CDs. Let's see, my first 5 were Fragile, Dark Side, Who's Next, Grand Illusion...and 90125. Can you guess which of these things is not like the others? I'll chalk it up to one of the curiosities of "strange things that teens buy", but it also means that I may have some fond memories of this album beyond the quality of the music.

Which isn't bad, by the way!

Of course we have the radio singles, Owner of a Lonely Heart, which is of course poppy but still fun to hear live, and Changes, which even mixes some fun prog sensibility (nice xylophone work!) with a balled that could have been written by the Scorpions in between. Our Song is also fun, in a poppy, Jefferson Starship-ian way, and I like sitar-like effect in It Can Happen.

That's about one side's worth of decent tunes. Unfortunately, that's all we get. I'm fine with leaving the rest back in 1983 with the other unmentionables of the era.

So, I'll go with 2-stars, because of the pop factor. But I do genuinely like some of this stuff, as long I keep the right perspective and avoid being biased--at least too much--by the band's previous glory.