Yes Top 40 countdown!! (please do not list spoilers/predictions)

Trooper number 8 on my list.

Sunrise was my number 1-this took time for it to get over the criticism George mentions which is the repetition but after decades of listening? This grows with that, stronger and stronger and sneaked past what I considered was their best song for decades which may or may not still turn up on the list.

Simple but complex and maybe the highpoint of the brilliance of Anderson's lyrics which evoke emotions rather than specify them.

 

Heart of the Sunrise was my #8. I love the contrast between the bleakness of the opening and the tentative warmth of Jon’s vocal. In fact, I tend to think of the song as an ongoing battle between feelings of desolation and striving for love. The growing strength in Jon’s vocal sounds like growing determination (or is it desperation?) for love to win out.

Starship Trooper was my #2. As a teenager, I loved the version from the 1978 BBC broadcast from Wembley. I thought the studio version was too tame, lacking the impressive solos of the live version. My tastes have changed over the years. Having listened to lots of classical music, I’m no longer impressed by virtuoso displays unless they really serve the music.

Exactly. Bruford’s playing is absolutely at the service of the song and is a large part of what helps make the studio version my favourite.

 

A fun thing about Heart of the Sunrise is that even after 40 years I don’t know exactly when they go up or down with the riffing. I’ve never compared — do they always play it the same way live or are there some places where they just do whatever they want? There’s probably a pattern but I’ve never sat down and worked out what it is.

 

Once heard, it cannot be unheard and shall remain evermore in my head moving forward.

 

I'd do the math if @George Co-Stanza doesn't want to take on an album project

 

Ok well looking at what’s left I guess we are down to:

dangerous (look in the light of what you’re searching for)
Money

good picks though I gotta say I wasn’t expecting them to get so high! Who will be number one?

 

To be honest, my top 3 are somewhat interchangeable on any given day. Perfect Yessongs, in my opinion. Whichever one of those three happens to be playing at the moment is likely "my favorite."

4 Heart of the Sunrise is my #3
3 Starship Trooper is my #2​

 

Heart of the Sunrise - #3

SHARP! DISTANCE!

Here he is again. Yelling words that make no sense but sound fantastic.

Superb tune with turbo-charged riffs. There is a section early on where the main heavy riff stops and we just hear Squire playing a bass riff. Then....MELLOTRON! Always welcome. Howe is faded in playing the central riff on top of this. All the while, Bruford is adding his tasteful jazzy drumming. Slowly builds until it tears into the main riff again, now only louder. The repetition, as one person noted, helps the song build and adds power.

When we finally get to John's vocal, it also starts out gently, but gains power as things progress.

Excellent bridge that mixes things up 2/3 of the way in.

Great sudden ending.

Following the massive epic, they throw in some humor with the cornball opening door and reprise of We Have Heaven.

Starship Trooper - #1

Like perhaps many of you, I used to record favorite songs off the radio. I'd wait around listening to the Top 40 station for my favorite big hits to come on. On one day, I must have had the dial slightly askew, landing on a rock or progressive station. My tape picked up the dramatic opening seconds of Starship Trooper. What in the world was that incredible sound? I heard that little segment for years on the tape, always wondering.

When I finally outgrew top 40 and got into rock, I heard Roundabout and All Good People of course, but it was not until I bought the Yes Album that I heard that familiar, incredible opening. Mystery finally solved!

This is the perfect Yes song as it contains all the prog elements, and all the Yes elements, but is still compact and tight. It never drags or drifts off into the ether. The ending section they dubbed Wurm is maybe their best example of building tension. Such a slow, slow build.

As with most Yes songs, the studio version towers over the live one. Perhaps this is an unpopular opinion, but though they are decent live, they aren't a band like Genesis or Little Feat who often outdid the studio versions in concert. Yes seemed to suffer from distorted sound, Anderson can struggle, and Howe often sounded out of tune. Never quite gels the way it does on record.

 

04 - Heart of the Sunrise - #2 on my list.

The song I suggest to someone who wants to know what Yes is about. Another song that shows the greatness of each player and the interplay between them.

It's often said that Jon's lyrics make no sense but "dreamer easy in the chair that really fits you" is spot on! My favorite line of any Yes song.

03 - Starship Trooper - #17 on my list.

Maybe should have ranked this better. A classic based on the Wurm section alone. Every day of this countdown I am reminded of the depth of this catalog.

 

Dangerous - Shows the versatility of Steve Howe so much so that many people say it isn't him.

Money - Wakeman's greatest performance. Why he never did backing vocals with Yes is beyond me.

 

22/38

Glad these two were aired together because I really got into classic Yes (no really, Classic Yes) and these two were the first ones I fell love with having already been familiar with their ‘80 material. The odd thing is that I tested them differently from each other in the tanking process and I’m not really sure why.

Heart of the Sunrise. #25
This one hit me first. Those driving drums and that melodic bass was the easiest thing to catch on to and boy did I love it.

Still do, but over time I’ve found it to be just a bit to repetitious. By the time you hit 2:50 and it’s “oh they’re really going for another round on this general riff” even as a big Yes fan, I can lose patience.

Still, as soon as I submitted my list I knew I made a mistake here. This should have easily placed another 10 slots higher had I a chance to re-rank.


Starship Trooper. #2
This was the second song from Classic Yes that caught my ear. I’ve probably played this one any of Yes “epics”.

But unlike a lot of their overly familiar songs, it never had lost its welcome. I think it might be three-part format with no section repetition

As I’ve stated throughout the thread, sometimes it feels like there’s padding and other times it feels like there too much repetition. Not so here.

More importantly, the sections flow into each other very effectively. Sometimes, like on Tales or Relayer, songs may have multiple good ideas but they don’t feel like they belong in the same piece.

Having said that, with this song, I sort of had the opposite kind of second thoughts as “Heart of the Sunrise”. Did this really belong at number 2?

So I just played it again, and I’m happy to say that it still holds up and is worthy of such a high ranking.

 

Maybe there is a longer version of "Bonanza," but listening to the theme song on Youtube, I don't hear anything sounding like Yours Is No Disgrace.

Howe cites different sources here.

Yes - Yours Is No Disgrace inspiration

 

It's not. See the famous Jimmy Haun interview with Henry Potts that reveals who played what. 90 percent on the guitar on the ABWH Union tracks is Haun.

 

Interesting. Post #13 from that thread has my suggestion (The Magnificent Seven), while post #14 suggests ‘Gideon’s Way’, which @Capt Fongsby mentioned earlier in this thread. But I agree that the rhythmic pattern from the Grandstand theme is closer.

 

I strongly suspect that the post to which you're responding was meant to be a tongue-in-cheek reference to exactly that.

 

22/38. I've squeaked up over 50%. But reviewing my list, it appears I'm not as enamored with some classic era Yes as I thought I was. That's an interesting realization for me. Based on my actual listening habits, I listen to 80's and later Yes albums more frequently than 70's. Maybe I've just overplayed the classics, so that affected my song choices in the ranking engine.

40 Astral Traveller
39 Endless Dream (#30)
38 The Ancient
37 Love Will Find a Way
36 Fly from Here (#23)
35 The Fish
34 On the Silent Wings of Freedom (#32)
33 The Remembering
32 Hold On
31 Into the Lens (#11)
30 Leave It
29 Parallels
28 Time and a Word (#17)
27 Does It Really Happen? (#33)
26 It Can Happen (#20)
25 Changes (#26)
24 America (#16)
23 To Be Over
22 Turn of the Century
21 Sound Chaser
20 Owner of a Lonely Heart (#5)
19 Going for the One
18 Ritual (Nous Sommes du Soleil) (#35)
17 Machine Messiah (#12)
16 Tempus Fugit (#19)
15 Wonderous Stories (#27)
14 Revealing Science of God
13 Perpetual Change (#25)
12 Long Distance Runaround
11 Gates of Delirium (#36)
9t South Side of the Sky
9t I've Seen All Good People (#6)
8 Siberian Khatru
7 Awaken (#2)
6 Roundabout (#15)
5 Yours Is No Disgrace (#7)
4 Heart of The Sunrise (#8)
3 Starship Trooper (#4)

 

You forgot “Last Train”

 

Siberian Khatru - My #6

Totally adore this track - especially the harpsichord solo and the Mellotron, guitar and bass throughout.

Awaken - My #27

An epic and fitting end to 'peak Yes' - though much brilliant music was, of course, to follow.

 

"Heart of the Sunrise" is my #7. The Yessongs version is superb. I do think Yes sometimes massively improved on studio versions, like this one. So powerful.

I have "Starship Trooper" at #8. Again peak Yes for me. "I still remember the talks by the water. The proud sons and daughters that knew the knowledge of the land and spoke to me in sweet accustomed ways"

 

Ooo then some drama still to happen!

 

When they add in the little twiddles Wakeman does on the synth it starts to feel a little silly... my only caveat about the song.

 

04 Heart of the Sunrise (Unranked)
I wasn't sure which order to write about these, but I'll address the elephant in the room first. I am one of 4 people who didn't place it in their top 40. A song that is so beloved that 60 people out of 87 put it in their top 10.

We all like what we like, and there is no right or wrong for something so subjective, but the numbers do imply that I'm wrong LOL.

I find this difference in opinion to be very interesting, because I don't hate the song, but I am indifferent to it, and can't articulate what it is that doesn't float my boat. Having said that, I've been playing this a lot over the last few days, because I knew that it would have a high ranking, and I wanted to understand my lack of love. An earworm was bouncing around my head this morning as I made breakfast, and it took me a while to realize that it was the main riff used for the first 3 1/2 minutes of the song. Perhaps that's the foothold I need to try to tackle it again, but for the time being at least, it will remain a mystery why I don't particularly like the song.

03 Starship Trooper (My #1)
On the other hand, Starship Trooper is my favorite Yes song, and I'm glad everyone else likes it too.

As mentioned in an earlier post, I first heard Yes on a Friday Rock Show live broadcast from the Tormato tour, which I taped and played again and again. It was probably my first exposure to prog rock (I also had tapes of PG-era Genesis and Rush concerts but I'm not sure which came first) and I fell in love with this song.

It starts off with a lovely melody from Jon, followed by a section focused on Steve's intricate finger picking, which sounds so different that it shouldn't work, but it does, for me at least. And then it morphs into a 4 minute instrumental which really just repeats the same motif again and again, but it's very hypnotic, and builds and builds before Steve finally unleashes his solo.

I found this video of Jon's stories about the early days of Yes to be very entertaining, capped by an unplugged solo rendition of the first part of Starship Trooper.

 

I had a feeling that almost all of the top ten would be from their 71-72 albums since those seem to be by far their most popular among fans (including casual fans).

 

Yeah, I've noticed how much we actually agree with this band's catalog!
And as far as Heart of the Sunrise goes, well, at least I can be wrong together with @Paisley Underground

Maybe we are lacking that special HotS gene that prevents us from being impacted by the song?