Rating The Classics - Yes: Drama

 

Turns out I don't like Drama as much as I thought I remembered. Most likely the second or third time I heard it, I started to get into some of the music, because there are some good sections in some of the songs. - 7headedchicken

 

Another great album Yes.Ok, Jon Anderson and Rick Wakeman are not here, but so what? Trevor Horn can not sing like Anderson (although their voices are similar), but Geoff Downes playing much better than Wakeman in "Tormato (there keyboards are a disgrace). - voliveira

 

This Yes album is really not my favorite but as got some good stuff. It's a good album and it sounds a bit like the old Yes. The bass lines are awesome but some songs like Run in through the light get very long and are at the base not great. - The_Jester

 

For me "Drama" is one of the stronger Yes albums. The sound is very sharp, with Chris Squire very much to the fore. The Buggles influence is not that apparent, in fact it is interesting to hear the Buggles track "I am a camera" and compare it to "Into the lens", the Yes interpretation of that track. While the two are recognisable as being the same song, the electro-pop of the Buggles is transformed into a decent slice of prog. - Easy Livin

 

One of those albums I was taken by surprise. This album has been often maligned thanks to the absence of Jon Anderson and Rick Wakeman. In their place was both guys from the BUGGLES (as in the hit "Video Killed the Radio Star", which became the very first video MTV ever played, by the way), Geoff Downes and Trevor Horn. To be honest, I thought this album was better than "Tormato". They were no longer inflicting me with such infantile crap as "Circus of Heaven" here, and the band was going for a harder-edge approach. Plus it's nice to see Roger Dean return and give us some artwork, as he did here. - Proghead

 

This was the album where Yes lost the plot!! I know because I was there and saw the band on this tour (oh dear). The Buggles, and video ,may have killed the radio star but Yes surely did'nt have to recruit The Buggles to replace the vocalist and the keyboards player. Trevor Horn was never really going to be a replacement for Jon Anderson and whoever dreamed this up made a monumental error in my opinion.None of the tracks are particularly memorable and the only good thing about it is the album cover.Give it a miss. - horza

 

Drama is a criminally underrated Yes album. Just because it doesn't feature the 'classic' line up, many automatically dismiss it as a bad record, mostly without ever giving it the time of day. The songs on it are some of the strongest Yes ever recorded. - arcer

 

First time I heard “Machine Messiah” I thought – dang, is this some sort of collaboration with Black Sabbath or what? And why is Jon Anderson leaning on Chris Squire so much for vocal support? Boy, little did I know….. - ClemofNazareth

 

I can't help but think it was this record that brought Jon Anderson back to the band. C'mon Jon, admit it, the boys did an amazing job and popped out one of the best things in Yes' catalog. The fact that it was not as musically intricate as previous Yes outings didn't mean it wasn't a kick-ass release, and one of the best things to emerge from the comatose progressive rock scene in 1980. - Atavachron

 

Drama has slightly more of an 80's sound compared to earlier albums, but it is still far, far away from the more commercial 90125 or Big Generator. Indeed, this album is much more in line with earlier Yes albums than what might be expected given the radical changes in the line up. Such vital members as Jon Anderson and Rick Wakeman were here replaced by Geoffrey Downes and Trevor Horn of The Buggles of all people! Geoff and Steve Howe would later form Asia. But Drama - thankfully! - does not sound anything like The Buggles or Asia. Drama is still very much a classic Yes album and, in my opinion, an improvement over Tormato, Going For The One, Relayer and Tales From Topographic Oceans. - SouthSideoftheSky

 

It's very sad to see how this excellent album is misunderstood and underrated by the Jon Anderson fans, yes it's true that Trevor Horn is not Jon...But what about that?

I always believed that the weakest link in YES was Jon's voice, well in Drama we have the chance to listen the band after the infamous Tormato and with a new vocalist, the results couldn't had been better, Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes gave YES another life after almost every reasonable fan believed the band was dead and buried, sadly this new breeze lasted only one album. - Ivan_Melgar_M

 

If you were to follow Yes' career, you might expect this album to really blow. Going for the One was good, but it was a step down from the reach that Yes had had with the three albums beforehand. Tormato was a clear step in the wrong direction for most fans. - TheGazzardian

 

Yes met the new decade with another lineup change and a strong studio album release. I guess that if someone would predict that Yes members would collaborate with a New Wave band, fans would have dismissed that though completely. But here we are 25 years later acknowledging that same fact! - Rune2000

 

Drama marks the entrance of a new vocalist for Yes, Trevor Horn. The change isn't really all that significant or noticeable though, as the vocals are still in the Jon Anderson style. The music here is roughly the same as on Relayer but with more coherence, but all together better and more interesting than Tormato. - colorofmoney91

 

Now that Yes have released an album with Benoit David on lead vocals, perhaps it's a good idea to give Drama another look. After all, before Fly From Here it rather stuck out as being the sole Yes album not to feature Jon Anderson - now, it looks like Yes albums without Jon are not going to be quite so unusual. - Warthur

 

By the way, thanks Logan for the poll idea.