Yessongs is the first live album by the English progressive rock band Yes, released as a triple album in the US on 4 May 1973 and in the UK on 18 May 1973 by Atlantic Records. After completing their Close to the Edge Tour in April 1973, the band selected live recordings between February and December 1972 on their tours supporting Fragile (1971) and Close to the Edge (1972) for a live album release. They were then edited and remixed with their producer and live sound mixer Eddy Offord. Two tracks feature original Yes drummer Bill Bruford, with the remainder of the drumming being performed by his replacement, Alan White.

Yessongs received a mostly positive reception from music critics, though much criticism was directed at its sound quality. The album was a commercial success for the band, reaching number 7 on the UK Albums Chart and number 12 on the US Billboard 200. In 1998, the album was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for selling over one million copies in the United States. In 2015, recordings of seven shows from late 1972, including ones that were used in the original album, were released in their entirety as Progeny: Seven Shows from Seventy-Two.

In September 1971, the Yes line-up of singer Jon Anderson, bassist Chris Squire, drummer Bill Bruford, guitarist Steve Howe, and newcomer keyboardist Rick Wakeman embarked on their Fragile Tour in support of the band's fourth studio album, Fragile (1971). The tour saw the band play across the United Kingdom, the United States, and Europe until March 1972. Following the recording of their fifth studio album, Close to the Edge (1972), the band resumed as a live act on 30 July 1972 to support the album. The tour saw the debut of drummer Alan White in the band after Bruford left when recording for the album had finished. His departure came eleven days prior to the tour's start, leaving White to learn the band's repertoire in three days. The tour ended in April 1973, by which time Yes had made additional live recordings. Yes manager Brian Lane said that people had started to think that the group were a "studio band" and were unable to reproduce what they recorded in the studio on stage, which became a reason for putting out a live album.

The Fragile and Close to the Edge tours had producer and engineer Eddy Offord travelling with the band as their live sound mixer who operated a sound system developed by the Clair Brothers. In addition, co-founder Roy Clair assisted with the operation of the system, and Geoff Haslam was hired as the recording engineer alongside assistant Mike Dunn to work on Yessongs. As Offord was in charge of the band's sound on stage, he could not operate the recording equipment at the same time. This resulted in recordings that he was disappointed with as they were substandard. When it was time for the album to be edited and remixed, Offord and the band retreated to studio 2 at Advision Studios in Fitzrovia, London to complete it. Howe recalled the group treated the mixing process with as much care and importance as one of their studio albums with careful consideration to the preparation of the various edits and the finished product.

The liner notes do not list recording dates or locations, but audio comparisons of the album and the live box set Progeny: Seven Shows from Seventy-Two (2015) can be made, in addition to the soundtrack to the Yessongs concert film. They are:

Yessongs begins with "Opening (Excerpt from 'Firebird Suite')", the closing section to the orchestral work The Firebird by Russian composer Igor Stravinsky. Yes have used the piece as the introductory music to most of their concerts since 1971, the year of the composer's death. The performance of the Suite heard on Yessongs is by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Seiji Ozawa, first released in 1970 (RCA Red Seal – LSB 4009), using Stravinsky's 1919 re-orchestration. The track segues into "Siberian Khatru" from Close to the Edge.

"Perpetual Change" and "Long Distance Runaround"/"The Fish (Schindleria Praematurus)" were recorded during the Fragile Tour with Bruford on drums, and feature extended solos from Howe, Bruford and Squire compared to the studio versions. "Excerpts from 'The Six Wives of Henry VIII'" is a keyboard solo spot of excerpts from Wakeman's first solo album The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1973), which he recorded during the Fragile and Close to the Edge tours and features Howe, Squire, Bruford, and White. The solo is preceded by Anderson singing notes from the opening of another Stravinsky orchestral piece, The Rite of Spring.

The album was originally presented in a gatefold sleeve with artwork designed and illustrated by the band's longtime associate, artist Roger Dean. His brother Martyn was responsible for its layout and additional photography, featuring shots of each member performing in concert. Dean described the album as "the most elaborate and complex package" of his career at the time, which consisted of three albums worth of artwork and a booklet. The large space for Dean's work allowed him to continue a theme that "implied a story" that he introduced on the cover of Fragile, which portrays a planet breaking into pieces and a spacecraft in flight. The narrative was continued on the sleeve of Close to the Edge. Dean recalled that talks about the artwork for Yessongs were scarce until he presented the group with a rough version of his "Pathways" painting, which was well received and influenced his decision to continue the narrative. However, Dean had to redesign a new broken planet to the one on Fragile as the pieces of land that break off were too square shaped, so the pieces seen on Yessongs are more triangular. The gatefold design involved complex paper folding that Dean described as "a way of going from gatefold to any number of pages, folded out of one piece of card", and resulted in Dean and his printers, Tinsley Robor, filing a patent for that way of folding. Further development of the technique was cut short due to a subsequent national paper shortage.