90125

This album was released during the dark years of progressive rock music where the genre was about to become a legacy as many pioneers of prog went pop or swept away by new wave / punk era. YES also one of the bands that went into pop bandwagon through this album that made the old fans - the Fragilers, the Close To The Edgeers and The Topograhicers - by surprise with radio hit that no one had ever imagined the band with prog reputation like YES went this way. Nothing wrong at all with the music but most people could not understand why YES was doing it this way.

On the other hand, I have to admit that through this album YES became much more popular as the listeners base had expanded tremendously. Many of my friends who knew YES from "Owner of A Lonely Heart" which became radio hit at that time finally collected previous albums of YES. What surprising was that most of them were very welcome with Yes oldies. I usually recommended "Fragile" after they knew YES from 90125 album. It's probably songs like "Roundabout", "Southside of The Sky" were in an upbeat tempo. I'm happy that many people know YES and this album was a huge commercial success for the band, with millions of copies sold worldwide.

Musically, this is not a bad album at all. Most tracks are accessible especially due to straight forward structure for most of songs featured here. "Changes" is a very good track with stunning guitar work by Trevor Rabin combined with great keyboard layers by Tony Kaye. The composition, melody and harmony are really good. The short track "Cinema" us one of my favorites even though the follow-up song "Leave It" is too poppy.

Even though this album does not represent the best of YES composition, but this album has given an excellent milestone for the band's career in music industry. Keep on proggin' ..!

Peace on earth and mercy mild - GW