“Yes” by Mcalmont and Butler

"Yes" was the opening shot from McAlmont & Butler, a single that hit the shops on Hut in May 1995 and was later folded into their debut album, The Sound Of... McAlmont & Butler. Bernard Butler had walked out of Suede on bitter terms, and this was the first thing he wrote afterwards: an instrumental with every piece in place except a voice. A demo went round with Julianne Regan, once of All About Eve, singing different words, before the finished song took shape with David McAlmont as co-writer.

Mike Hedges produced it as a soul ballad on a grand, sweeping scale, and Butler has called it a liberating song after months of dark music and lost friends. It became the duo's first UK hit, reaching number eight, and still stands as their biggest single; NME later placed it at 174 on its list of the 500 greatest songs of all time.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.