Roundabout
by Yes
- 136
- BPM
- E minor
- Key
- 9A
- Camelot
- 41
- Danceability
- 7
- Acousticness
Jon Anderson and Steve Howe wrote "Roundabout" in the back of the band's transit van. Yes were on tour in March 1971, traveling from Aberdeen to Glasgow after a gig in Aviemore, Scotland. They passed many roundabouts on the way, "maybe 40 or so" by Anderson's count. The roundabouts and the mountains outside went into the lyrics. Anderson began writing the words in his notebook in a free-form style. A loch near Glasgow gave him the line "In and around the lake." At the hotel in Glasgow, he and Howe put song ideas down on their recorder.
The band recorded it that September at Advision Studios in London for the album Fragile, with Eddy Offord as co-producer. Rick Wakeman, who had replaced the fired Tony Kaye, played piano chords that were recorded and played backwards to open the song. Howe said it sounded as if it were rushing toward him. Wakeman's Hammond organ solo went down in one take.
Atlantic released the album in November 1971 and an edited single in the US on January 4, 1972, cut to 3:27 for radio. The single reached number 13 on the Billboard Hot 100. Anderson and Howe won a BMI Award for it in 1973.
Roundabout runs at 136 BPM, the tempo of techno, trance and big-room dance. In classical terms it sits in allegro territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 1.76 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 441 ms. It is in E minor, Camelot 9A, which shares its notes with G major and mixes cleanly with A minor and B minor.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.