Rick Wakeman Wakeman later called it "dreadful" as contractual disputes between Atlantic Records, who had signed Yes, and A&M prevented him from writing his own composition. Wakeman claimed his contributions to the group written tracks were not credited, that management had agreed to "sort something out on the publishing side" but never took care of it. Wakeman "enjoyed the music too much" to cause a rift about the issue, but said it amounts to "a fair bit of money." "Fragile" reached the top ten in the UK and the US; the Fragile Tour marked Wakeman's first visit to North America. Its commercial
The Fragile (Nine Inch Nails album) and writes that "The Fragile" uses funk bass lines, North African minor-key modalities, and the treatment of tonality by Symbolist composers like Debussy. The album also features several distorted guitar parts which Powers suggests that fans can enjoy. Rob Sheffield observes a "prog-rock vibe" akin to Pink Floyd's 1979 album "The Wall" and feels that "The Fragile" is similarly "a double album that vents ... alienation and misery into paranoid studio hallucinations, each track crammed with overdubs until there's no breathing room". Described by Reznor as a sequel to "The Downward Spiral"—an album with a plot detailing the destruction of