Yes: Leave It

The concept is simple and quite safe at the time of its release: Yes members appear singing the song, all suited up and all lined-up, and their heads keep on moving or floating around while they stay still and at other times they move around as if being paper figures coming out of a printer. Early 1980's and music video had a certain technology available to them and partners Godley and Creme made this video for the single "Leave It", from Yes smash hit album "90125" and although it appears as a simplistic one-take shot filled with special effects, in fact there's a whole lot going on - carefully explained on MTV's making of which has a page here and it can be easily found on YouTube.

Chris Squire, Trevor Rabin, Jon Anderson, Alan White and Tony Kaye are all introduced against a white blackground while wearing identical outfits and lip-synching "Leave It" and then different effects make their heads move or their bodies keep on spinning or moving in unusual ways or they are hang upside down. Groundbreaking at the time of its release but slightly dated now, the clip works not just because of its image, but it also because of its song, one of the most accessible songs from the group, and the relation made to the images presented comes through some sort of detachment of one's rooted ideas of how things should be in order to embrace changes or see the world through different perspectives, to break patterns.

Godley and Creme's idea as seen in the making of revolved around 18 different concepts - which means that they filmed 18 different music videos until they come up with the special effects idea but the main theme of showing Yes performing the song in full static mode remained in the final product. Like "Owner of a Lonely Heart" it is one of the group's most memorable music videos. My wish was that the other videos could be made or released since "Leave It" has actually three versions on the album (one a capella, the single and another similar to the single with a slight instrumental variation). 8/10.