Creativity Quote by Billy Sherwood

Pride, here, is doing double duty: it’s both genuine satisfaction and a careful piece of band diplomacy. Billy Sherwood isn’t just saying he likes the album. He’s staking a claim for legitimacy inside a catalog that fans treat less like a discography and more like a constitution. “A Yes record” is a loaded credential, especially for a group whose identity has been litigated for decades through lineup changes, stylistic pivots, and the never-ending fan question: what counts as “real” Yes?

The phrasing is almost comically circular, and that’s the tell. Sherwood doesn’t hype the work as a masterpiece or a rebirth; he places it “amongst” the others, like a book slid onto a shelf that was already full of sacred texts. That modesty reads strategic. It avoids poking the bear of prog purism while still asserting: this belongs. For a musician who’s often been seen as a later-era caretaker, archivist, or inheritor of a sound pioneered by bigger mythic figures, the sentence functions as a quiet referendum on his role. He’s proud not because it breaks from the lineage, but because it survives the lineage’s gatekeeping.

There’s also an emotional undertow: the relief of making something that feels continuous rather than compromised. In legacy bands, new music is always judged against nostalgia, and Sherwood’s line acknowledges that reality without sounding defensive. It’s pride with the volume knob turned down - which, in the politics of Yes, is often the only way to be heard.