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eduardossc View Drop Down
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Direct Link To This Post Topic: Is "Roundabout" POP?
    Posted: October 11 2005 at 15:11
Just wondering. Is Roundabout a POP song with superb instrumentation?. Prog-pop perhaps ?
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 11 2005 at 15:13
i think owner of a lonely heart is much more "pop"
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 11 2005 at 15:20

No. Look at the changes and the arrangement of chords.

However, it did somehow make it on the charts. ..Which would make it a popular song thus making it pop.LOL

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Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 11 2005 at 15:20

^ Agreed.

Roundabout has the complexity factor at least.

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Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 11 2005 at 15:41
Too long and complex to be pop, but it's definitely one of the "catchier" prog songs (once the bass and drums kick in). Awesome chorus as well. It didn't make the charts in the UK, wouldn't it be good to hear songs like that on the radio.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 11 2005 at 15:52
It is quite poppish and no wonder I hate that song. It is even sometimes played in the radio here in Finland so that should speak for itself.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 11 2005 at 16:01
Strange as it may seem now, back in the early seventies, it was
still unclear as to which direction pop music would go, ie. it
wasn't so defined as it appears today, (as if pop means only 3
chords, and anything with 4 or 5 would be "progressive"). There
was a big diversity of styles, everything from Santana to
Jefferson Airplane/Starship, even Tull's "Living in the Past" in
5/8, that was a top 40 pop hit, "Roundabout" was constantly on
the radio, and anything seemed possible, the audience for this
stuff was HUGE. There was still an air of experimentation in
pop music, and nobody wanted to hear retro anything, only
new sounds were considered cool. Then the music industry
clamped down, and recycling became a much easier means of
fabricating hits and controlling the market, don't experiment,
always stay with the tried and tested!!!
Thus came the word POP to symbolize commercial bubble-
gum, and anything a BIT more interesting became that weird,
freaked-out British fairy music you guys call "progressive".
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 11 2005 at 16:20
It's a prog song that became popular I would say. I hear it on the raido every so often (read: almost never now).
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 11 2005 at 16:32
Roundabout's popularity is similiar to Pink Floyd's "Money". They both have odd time signatures and changes, but yet they are the most popular songs (to the mainstream audience) from both groups.
I think they both rock pretty hard but at the same time have catchy lyrics and choruses, and that is how they became pop songs.
You can't possibly hear the last movement of Beethoven's Seventh and go slow. ~Oscar Levant, explaining his way out of a speeding ticket
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 11 2005 at 16:39

Pop? The band released a shortened version as a hit single, and Rick Wakeman called that "a  musical abortion".

Maybe we should call the single version  "pop" and the album version "progressive rock". How about that?



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Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 11 2005 at 16:40

I have always felt it had a pop ''feel'' to it, but not purely poppish of course!

Not your common 4/4 song, but the atmosphere, the recurrent bassline, etc. makes it somewhat of a poppish song.

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Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 11 2005 at 16:41
^ Yea, that's a clever conclusion!
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 11 2005 at 16:42

 

I would agree with Royal Jelly, thing were less defined at the end of the sixties. That is how we can see Santana, jefferson airplane, Yes, the Moodies, or Janis Joplin on the pop chart. Music was evolving rapidly, the short 3 minute dities were on their way out, and longer cuts became radio play as FM radio started to expand...Then came AOR radio, and I remember seeing some long songs in the charts...In a Gadda da Vida,By iron Buttelfy, "Music",By John Miles (great song), There was  song by Eric Carmen that was long, and charted well, and i also remember something from a duo of piano players, Twins I believe called Mark and Clark that was very extensive and charted well in Holland.

I think Yes has done Poppier things than Roundabout, and one problem if you hear a song often or played to death you will soon enough learn to hate it. Roundabout may have suffered from that, but technically and musically it is a masterpiece and well crafted piece of music.

 

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Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 11 2005 at 16:43
It's funny, Genesis was the band that led me into listening to progrock. A friend of mine, who was into country-rock, said: "Well, you'll probably like Yes too. That's symphonic rock too". I thought to myself: "Yes? I don't think so! I only know 2 hitsingles, Roundabout and Owner Of A Lonely Heart". Only when I listened to their albums, I found out that they were really progressive.

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Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 11 2005 at 18:08
Not really, it's the  poppier song on the album, but any album needs a radio friedly single to sell. It's still good.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 11 2005 at 18:11
It's not pop. I just think it was written and happened to become popular. Not
that it was written for the purpose of selling.
One likes to believe
In the freedom of music
But glittering prizes
And endless Compromises
Shatter the illusion
Of integrity
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 11 2005 at 18:45

NO!!!!

Just because it sounds slightly commercial doesn't make it Pop. 90125 is pop.


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Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 11 2005 at 19:48
Originally posted by flying teapot flying teapot wrote:


I would agree with Royal Jelly, thing were less defined at the end of the sixties. That is how we can see Santana, jefferson airplane, Yes, the Moodies, or Janis Joplin on the pop chart. Music was evolving rapidly, the short 3 minute dities were on their way out, and longer cuts became radio play as FM radio started to expand...Then came AOR radio, and I remember seeing some long songs in the charts...In a Gadda da Vida,By iron Buttelfy, "Music",By John Miles (great song), There was song by Eric Carmen that was long, and charted well, and i also remember something from a duo of piano players, Twins I believe called Mark and Clark that was very extensive and charted well in Holland.


I think Yes has done Poppier things than Roundabout, and one problem if you hear a song often or played to death you will soon enough learn to hate it. Roundabout may have suffered from that, but technically and musically it is a masterpiece and well crafted piece of music.




Space is dark it is so endless
When you're lost it's so relentless
It is so big, it is small
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 11 2005 at 22:07
pop - short for popular - was roundabout ever popular?
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 11 2005 at 22:38

Roundabout was a surprise Top 10 hit single back in 1972, cobb ... at least I think so ...

but the album version on Fragile is quality prog-rock in my book, not pop at all ...

"Death to Utopia! Death to faith! Death to love! Death to hope?" thunders the 20th century. "Surrender, you pathetic dreamer.”

"No" replies the unhumbled optimist "You are only the present."
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