The Moody Blues - This Is The Moody Blues poll

And they're very albumy albums so I think people would be missing out on a lot if they stuck with a best-of

I agree. I listened to this comp today, and I'm glad I know the songs from the albums. They clipped the punchline out of "Dear Diary" and removed the gong from the end of "Late Lament"!
I was thinking I would vote for "Watching and Waiting" but this remix brings the harmony vocal up and changes the whole mood... so I'll be obvious and vote for "Nights in White Satin".

we are having Santa Ana winds in Southern California today with a hint of fire smoke in the air where I'm at, seems like a perfect night for the Moody Blues

they're very albumy albums

Yes they are, they begin very theatrically, with spoken word and big orchestral crescendos and whatnot, and end similarly. Lots of lovely segues between songs as well. I wanted to own all the albums individually at the time (my best friend's older brother had them all) but as a kid on a budget this comp really hit most of the high points. Thanks to this thread I'm now relistening to the complete albums for the first time in ages.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

As I mentioned above, this is the album I listened to through high school, so I had never heard "Go Now" until probably the early '80s--it wasn't anything that still got played on the radio. (And I didn't year Bessie Banks' original until years after that; it ended one episode of some history of rock and roll I was watching.) Anyway, it'd be pretty close for me between "Go Now" and "Tuesday Afternoon" if they were both on this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2L3UzM_FfE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prlWGe2EHro

Nice live version by the Wings in '76 on YouTube also, with Denny Laine singing lead.

this was a great listen and i am going to have to check out their albums

i could have voted for five or six different songs but in the end it was "Never Comes the Day"

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

surprised "Question" only got one vote, it's kind of a perfect song in a way

That was mine…

Then again, not many votes here overall

Legend of Mind here. So expansive and dreamy, one of the songs that made me fall in love with psych. I now realize that as pre-internet 14 year old, it was a few years before I learned who Timothy Leary was. As the song enveloped me I just assumed he was another quirky chappy like Arnold Layne or Happy Jack or Walter in "Do You Remember Walter"

Repeatedly, I have always loved this song from the Hayward/Lodge album:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bheNRb3D0I

(Clearly I meant “relatedly,” but I have also listened to this song many times over)

For this list, it probably would’ve been Never Comes the Day as well. I am a big sucker for the stately Hayward ballads.

I'm always surprised by who I meet who turns out to be a big Moody Blues fan. A straight-edge punk I knew in high school loved In Search Of The Lost Chord and insisted that our punk band take a high-speed run at "Legend Of A Mind." Had to convince our singer that "Timothy Leary's dead..." was sufficiently anti-hippie (ha!) and in the end we sounded a little like Nazz Nomad-era The Damned. Wish I had that recording.

Not exactly the same thing but close:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvQXuFj1Kc4

i voted for this.

clearly someone is enjoying themselves a lot more than the others.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68OXtuxKRr4

How do all 5 of them look like game show hosts

I voted in this, "Tuesday Afternoon," but I'd forgotten how great the co-winner "Lovely to See" is. Actually, I think I may have always underappreciated it and just realized that now (found a thrift-shop CD of On the Threshold of a Dream). Swear to god, all that guitar interplay could be the Jefferson Airplane, and it's an oddly perfect setting for their proper English voices.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiHUAVZf_FY