“Roundabout” by Yes

"Roundabout" comes from Fragile, Yes's fourth studio album, released on Atlantic in November 1971, and it's the band's prog ambitions at full tilt and yet somehow hummable. Jon Anderson and Steve Howe wrote it after a tour drive from Aberdeen to Glasgow that seemed to be nothing but roundabouts, and Yes produced it with Eddy Offord, who also engineered. Chris Squire's bass barks and gallops, Bill Bruford's drums snap and skip, Rick Wakeman's keyboards swirl, Howe's guitar picks out bright, knotty figures and Anderson sings like a choirboy lost on a Scottish back road.

An edited single followed in the US in January 1972, backed with "Long Distance Runaround", and it made it all the way to 10 on Cash Box, while Billboard's Hot 100 had it stalling at 13. Anderson and Howe picked up a BMI Award for writing it in 1973.

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