Free as a Bird
The album was a turn of direction of sorts, with most of the songs stepping back from their progressive rock sound, employing synthesised dance beats and rhythms. Chief songwriter Rick Davies later recalled, ""Free as a Bird" was an experiment to try and be modern and build it up with computers and drum machines and have people come in one by one, which makes you lose the band spirit a little bit." In the liner notes to the 2005 compilation "Retrospectacle", Davies said, "Each time we went in, we would try to give it something a bit different. "Free as a Bird" was a lot more machine-based than anything we'd done before. That was good and bad, but it had some interesting songs on it."