Top 10 Pink Floyd Songs Top 10 Pink Floyd Songs By Michael Gallucci January 27, 2013 9:00 AM REDDIT Evening Standard, Hulton Archive, Getty Images You can break down the 14 albums that Pink Floyd made over three decades into several distinct eras. There’s the Syd Barrett one, where they were a mind-tripping psychedelic band; there’s the post-Barrett era, where they became heady prog-rockers, which gave way to their reign as one of the ’70s biggest groups; and finally there’s the period after main songwriter Roger Waters left, a mostly indistinguishable decade of by-the-numbers pointlessness. The majority of tracks on our list of the Top 10 Pink Floyd Songs come from that stretch in the ’70s when they were one of the hugest bands on the planet. But we left room for some of the trippy stuff too.

10 From: ‘The Piper at the Gates of Dawn’ (1967) Syd Barrett lasted for only a handful of singles and one album (well, he has one song on Floyd’s second LP) before his drug-accelerating mental problems pushed him out of the band. The opening cut on their debut album is an outer-space freak-out that bridges Pink Floyd’s psychedelic and prog eras with warped brilliance. From: ‘Wish You Were Here’ (1975) Everyone wanted a piece of Pink Floyd after ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’ sold a gazillion copies (see No. 6 on our list of the Top 10 Pink Floyd Songs), especially the shady music-industry types Waters never trusted. ‘Have a Cigar’ is all about those clueless suits. “By the way, which one’s Pink?” sings guest Roy Harper, a British folkie, summing up the era. From: ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’ (1973) ‘The Dark Side of the Moon”s penultimate track is more or less the theme song of Pink Floyd’s most popular album.

More than any other cut on the record, ‘Brain Damage’ surveys the mental scars left on both the band and Syd Barrett after their former bandmate’s mental illness forced his departure (first from the group and eventually from reality). This centerpiece segues into the closing ‘Eclipse,’ so feel free to tag it on. Pink Floyd’s sixth album was a turning point of sorts, as the band inched closer to more structured songs, as opposed to the atmospheric set pieces that dominated their previous records. ‘Echoes,’ ‘Meddle”s highlight, still runs more than 23 minutes, but its mix of long instrumental passages and vocal patches is a precursor to the career-changing ‘The Dark Side of the Moon.’ From: ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’ (1973) Once the band started to receive some attention, the concept of fame and its trappings became an obsession for Waters (see No. 9 on our list of the Top 10 Pink Floyd Songs). Ironically, ‘Money’ — an anti-greed rant — became the group’s first hit single and set ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’ on its path to one of the bestselling albums ever made.

Its massive popularity only added to Waters’ list of complaints. ‘Another Brick in the Wall (Part II)’ From: ‘The Wall’ (1979) Pink Floyd’s only No. 1 single doesn’t make a whole lotta sense outside of the hit album’s concept, but it’s an important song in the band’s career and another of songwriter Waters’ long list of gripes against society in general. The fact that ‘Another Brick in the Wall (Part II)’ managed to top the pop-music chart says much about the band’s popularity in the late ’70s and early ’80s. ‘Shine on You Crazy Diamond’ From: ‘Wish You Were Here’ (1975) ‘Shine on You Crazy Diamond’ was originally released as a two-song, eight-part, 26-minute suite on the band’s follow-up to the mega-popular ‘The Dark Side of the Moon.’ And like several Floyd projects from the period, the song references former bandmate Syd Barrett’s descent into mental illness. It’s an epic piece, the bookends to one of the group’s most durable LPs.

Waters penned most of ‘The Wall’ by himself, tracing childhood issues to Floyd-era conflicts. ‘Comfortably Numb’ is one of the few songs written with Gilmour, who supplies the music and terrific guitar solo, one of the most celebrated in rock history. The song shows up in the middle of ‘The Wall,’ as the main character struggles to get through another day and another show. Then the guitar breaks through the fog, providing a brief glimpse of cathartic clarity. You Think You Know Pink Floyd? Learn something new about David Gilmour, Roger Waters and the rest with lesser-known facts from this exclusive video! Pink Floyd’s The Wall · We're No. 1 · The A.V. Club Source If ever there was an example of a rock band raising the stakes for live performance so high that no mere mortal could ever hope to mount his or her own version of it—the core complaint of the insurgent, do-it-yourself punks—it was Pink Floyd. But in his own extravagantly expensive, hopelessly larger-than-life way, Waters was just as disgusted with the status quo of big-time rock music. And on The Wall, he was prepared to offer a far more interesting perspective because he was an insider.

Waters had first-hand knowledge as to why rock music needed to be destroyed. He was intimately acquainted with the alienation that comes from spending your life wandering through hotel rooms, tomb-like recording studios, and massive rock shows where 50,000 people stare at four tiny musicians traipsing about on a distant stage like dancing ants. Broadly, The Wall is about the disconnection that all people feel toward one another. But it was inspired specifically by Waters no longer relating to his audience. In Waters’ view, Pink Floyd and its fans were dehumanized by the inescapable popularity of The Dark Side Of The Moon and Wish You Were Here, which ushered the band out of its long-standing cult status and toward full-on, stadium-hopping rock stardom. The distancing effect that fame had on Waters—coupled with the Floyd’s stoner-friendly image, which clashed with Waters’ more high-minded sensibilities—contributed many bricks to the indomitable wall that his alter-ego “Pink” eventually tears down in The Wall. In that sense, The Wall was an arena-rock record about arena rock—and possibly the last arena-rock record if Waters was at all successful at getting his ideas across.

“I wanted to make comparisons between rock ’n’ roll concerts and war,” Waters later told Rolling Stone. “People at those big things seem to like being treated very badly, to have it so loud and distorted that it really hurts.” The Wall, in turn, was all about bringing those people the ultimate pain. This is common knowledge to anyone who’s spent a good chunk of time trying to digest all the bile that Waters serves up over four sides of The Wall. Even for people who love it (and I count myself among those people), it’s not an easy record to experience from beginning to end. In many ways, The Wall is the punchiest and most direct Pink Floyd record: It has more songs than Meddle, Dark Side Of The Moon, Wish You Were Here, and Animals combined, mainly because those albums favor side-long suites that go on for 20 minutes. The Wall is more song-oriented; Waters has a ton of them, and he keeps underlining his themes with harder and harder strokes via pained, cracked-voiced dirges that are heavy on somber pianos and wrenching synths.

I tend to cherry-pick the hits whenever I revisit the album—“Another Brick In The Wall (Part 2),” “Hey You,” “Comfortably Numb,” “Run Like Hell”—but that misses the point of The Wall, where the bloat is supposed to be the main attraction. To quote a band that’s been called the Pink Floyd of its generation, Waters hoped that you choked on The Wall. Source The idea for The Wall crystallized during an epically shitty concert at Olympic Stadium in Montreal on July 6, 1977, the final date of Pink Floyd’s 55-show “In The Flesh” tour of Europe and North America in support of Animals. It was Floyd’s biggest tour yet, marking the first time (and last, with Waters anyway) it would regularly play stadiums.

Waters, by his own account, spent the tour drudging through a miserable, self-absorbed snit, later telling BBC radio that he grew to resent the majority of shrieking, drunken concertgoers “who were only there for the beer.” At the same time he knew the “In The Flesh” tour was something “we [had] created ourselves, out of our own greed.” He came to see the tour as “a circus and meaningless ritual,” and rock ’n’ roll in general as “greed disguised as entertainment, just as war has become greed disguised as politics.” Waters could almost be mistaken for John Lydon with that quote, even if he was enjoying his own forms of greed and pettiness on tour, like traveling to Pink Floyd gigs by helicopter while his bandmates arrived by relatively modest limousines. But no amount of comforts could ease the slow-motion meltdown Waters experienced during the tour, which culminated that night in Montreal, when Waters—in a telling inverse of the punk-rock practice of “gobbing” on the band—spit directly in the face of a particularly annoying fan in the front row. Relating the now-famous story to Rolling Stone, Waters called it “a very fascistic thing to do.

It frightened me. But I’d known for a while during the tour—which I hated—that there was something very wrong.” Listening to a bootleg recording of the concert, another outburst by Waters during “Pigs On The Wing (Part 2),” which keeps getting interrupted by yahoos setting off fireworks, stands out. “Oh, for fuck's sakes, stop letting off fireworks and shouting and screaming, I'm trying to sing a song!” Waters says, sounding more exhausted than angry. Along with the frustrating feeling that his so-called fans weren’t paying attention to the music that they had paid to hear, Waters sensed that the newly outsized scale of Pink Floyd’s live show had made the band strangely irrelevant at its own concerts. It was as if it didn’t matter that the real Pink Floyd was there at all. Waters played off this idea on The Wall’s opening track “In The Flesh?,” a goof on arena bombast performed by a look-alike Floyd live in concert, a caustic but insightful comment on how impersonal and faceless mega-selling bands like Pink Floyd had become by the end of the ’70s.

Source The Wall isn’t the only instance of a massively popular rock band sternly meditating on the torturous aftershocks of stardom, but it’s the most commercially successful example. That’s because Waters, for all his vitriolic rhetoric likening rock shows to combat, wasn’t really a punk. He was a populist. It didn’t matter that he hated actual people: He still sought, perhaps unconsciously, their acceptance, because like all insecure rock stars, the only thing Waters feared more than Pink Floyd being huge was Pink Floyd not being huge. After Animals failed to sell as well as The Dark Side Of The Moon and Wish You Were Here, Pink Floyd was suddenly amenable to the suggestion that The Wall, at the behest of co-producer Bob Ezrin, include a single for Top 40 radio. Lyrically, “Another Brick In The Wall (Part 2)” was a youth-gone-wild anthem in the vein of Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out,” a song anyone who’s ever hated compulsory education (i.e. anyone subjected to compulsory education) could relate to. But it was the music that really made the song feel at home on the radio.

With its chicken-scratch guitar and Waters’ subtly funky, disco-derived bass line, “Another Brick In The Wall (Part 2)” sounded like Chic with manic-depressive disorder. For the first time, you could actually dance to a Pink Floyd song, or at least entertain the possibility of dancing as you lay on the bed with your headphones on. Fittingly, in March 1980, “Another Brick In The Wall (Part 2)” became Pink Floyd’s first and only No. 1 hit, staying at the top of the charts for five weeks. Source Funny enough, the chart success of “Another Brick In The Wall (Part 2)” inadvertently ended up being the most punk-rock aspect of The Wall, as far as exposing the inner rot of the music industry. As detailed by Fredric Dannen in his classic 1990 book Hit Men, the president of Pink Floyd’s record label, CBS’ Dick Asher, decided to conduct an experiment with “Another Brick In The Wall (Part 2),” by not paying off the independent promoters CBS used to push singles on major radio stations in Los Angeles.

The song certainly didn’t seem to need an extra push in February 1980: Floyd was scheduled to perform five sold-out Wall concerts at the Los Angles Sports Arena, and “Another Brick In The Wall (Part 2)” was already moving up the charts. Asher was trying to see if he could kill off a monster that had been created by the record industry—a monster that was now murdering his bottom line. Major labels had set up a system intended to prevent indies from getting their songs on the radio, using independent promoters as middle men to bribe station managers and program directors to play their latest product (and keep the little guys out). When I interviewed Tommy Shaw of Styx back in March, he talked about how he made pay-offs of various kinds himself, helping to make the band’s breakthrough song, 1977’s “Come Sail Away,” a Top 10 hit. Jim and I would just be on these relentless campaigns with the local promo guys, or anyone who would come with us. And we would have a pocket full of, you know, fun-powder and cash, and we just went around and did everything that we could to get this song on the radio.

We had big plans for that song, so we just went at it like a kamikaze: “We are going to get this on the radio or we are going to die trying.” We went coast to coast and gave away TV sets and VCRs and promised this and that—plane tickets, anything—and we got the bullet back. Most artists weren’t as willing to get their hands dirty, so the labels kept independent promoters who were responsible for working dozens of radio stations on the payroll. One of these men was a native Philadelphian named Joe Isgro, a man who, as Dannen writes, “could have passed for a hood,” with his wardrobe of black shirts and custom-made suits, his pencil-thin mustache, and omnipresent bodyguards. (Isgro, who was alleged to have ties to the Gambino crime family, was later convicted of extortion.) Guys like Isgro took as much as $300,000 to promote one song, pocketing much of the cash for themselves. By 1985, labels were spending between $60 and $80 million on independent promoters.

Isgro was one of the men that Asher declined to pay off to promote “Another Brick In The Wall (Part 2)”; sure enough, in spite of Pink Floyd’s popularity, the four L.A. stations handled by CBS’ jilted independent promoters refused to play the song. Only when the money faucet was turned back on did “Another Brick In The Wall (Part 2)” become one of the most played songs on L.A. radio. If The Wall exposed the fissures undoing the music industry, it also stands as a monument to a fading generation of bands. As the record topped the albums chart, many of Pink Floyd’s contemporaries were entering periods of decline or death—Led Zeppelin lost John Bonham and broke up; The Who lost Keith Moon and limped along for four years and two little-loved albums; John Lennon was murdered, officially making a Beatles reunion impossible; The Rolling Stones and Kinks carried into the ’80s as creatively compromised units; Bob Dylan and Neil Young would endure long fallow periods before resurging creatively in the ’90s. As for Pink Floyd, there was no tearing down the wall that had gone up among the band members.

In his zeal to express his personal vision of a rock band gone horribly wrong, Waters had poisoned his own rock band. He squeezed out keyboardist Rick Wright during the Wall sessions, and would soon direct his ire toward drummer Nick Mason. Gilmour was also estranged from the creative partner he’d eventually usurp at the head of Pink Floyd. “Back in the early ’70s we used to pretend that we were a group,” Waters told Rolling Stone. “We used to pretend that we all do this and we all do that, which of course wasn’t true. And at one point I started to get very resentful, because I was doing a lot more and yet we were all pretending that we were doing it.” With The Wall, there was no mistaking that it was one man’s masterwork, but the bitter irony was that the creator had lost track of his own message in the process. There was no catharsis for Roger Waters, only a greater sense of disconnection. He was now encased inside a self-created world surrounded by white cardboard bricks—completely, utterly alone. Coming up: Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Pink Floyd | The Official Site Remember a Day? The early Sixties.

Everything is up in the air, not least love, drugs and sex. A group of talented teenagers from academic backgrounds in Cambridge  Roger 'Syd' Barrett, Roger Waters and David Gilmour  are all keen guitarists and among many who move to London, keen to discover more of this new world and express themselves in it. Mainly in further education  studying the arts, architecture, music  they mix with like-minded incomers in the big city. In 1965, Barrett and Waters meet an experimental percussionist and an extraordinarily gifted keyboards-player  Nick Mason and Rick Wright respectively. The result is Pink Floyd, which more than 40 years later has moved from massive to almost mythic standing. Through several changes of personnel, through several musical phases, the band has earned a place on the ultimate roll call of rock, along with the Beatles, the Stones and Led Zeppelin. Their album sales have topped 250 million. In 2005, at Live 8  the biggest global music event in history  the reunion of the four-man line-up that recorded most of the Floyd canon stole the show.

And yet, true to their beginnings, there has always been an enigma at their heart. Roger 'Syd' Barrett, for example. This cool and charismatic son of a university don was the original creative force behind the band (which he named after the Delta bluesmen Pink Anderson and Floyd Council). His vision was perfect for the times, and vice versa. He would lead the band to its first precarious fame, and damage himself irreparably along the way. And though the Floyd's Barrett era only lasted three years, it always informed what they became. These were the summers of love, when LSD was less an hallucinogenic interval than a lifestyle choice for some young people, who found their culture in science fiction, the pastoral tradition, and a certain strain of the Victorian imagination. Drawing on such themes, the elfin Barrett wrote and sang on most of the early Floyd's material, which made use of new techniques, such as tape-loops, feedback and echo delay. Live, the Floyd played sonic freak-outs  half-hidden by new-fangled light-shows and projections  with Barrett's spacey lead guitar swooping over Waters' trance-like bass, while Wright and Mason created soundscapes above and beneath.

On record they were tighter, if still 'psychedelic'. Either way, they sounded 'trippy'. And perhaps that was Barrett's intention. He certainly ingested plenty of LSD and other drugs, which didn't help his delicate mental balance. Over the spring of 1966, the young band were regulars at the Spontaneous Underground 'happenings' on Sundays at the legendary Marquee Club, where they were spotted by their future managers Peter Jenner and Andrew King. And by the autumn, the Floyd had become the house band of the so-called London Free School in west London. A semi-residency at the All Saint's Hall led to bigger bookings  at the UFO and the International Times' launch in the Roundhouse  as well as the recording of the instrumental 'Interstellar Overdrive' with the UFO's co-founder, producer Joe Boyd. (This track was later used on hip documentaries of the scene.) A signing to EMI followed in early 1967. "We want to be pop stars," said Syd. In March, Boyd recorded Barrett's oddly commercial 'Arnold Layne' as a three-minute single.

And with a Top Twenty hit to promote, the band took on a gruelling schedule of gigs and recordings. They appeared at the coolest event of the summer, The 14-Hour Technicolor Dream in Alexandra Palace. They gave a concert under the banner 'Games for May' in a classical venue  the Queen Elizabeth Hall  where they displayed their theatrical ambitions through the use of props, pre-recorded tapes and the world's first quadraphonic sound system. (They received a lifetime ban for throwing daffodils into the audience.) And in June the Floyd released a single originally written for this event. 'See Emily Play', which was produced by EMI's Norman Smith, charted at Number Six and made it on to primetime TV's Top of the Pops three times (with Barrett acting increasingly strangely). This was followed in August by Pink Floyd's first LP, The Piper At The Gates of Dawn, which they recorded at Abbey Road next door to the Beatles, then working on Sergeant Pepper. Again making the Top Ten, the album is mainly Barrett's and is a precious relic of its time, a wonderful mix of the whimsical and weird.

Talking of which, Barrett's behaviour and output were threatening to bring the band down with him: refusing to speak, playing one de-tuned string all night, writing material like 'Scream Thy Last Scream, Old Woman with a Basket'. The band wanted to keep their frontman and hoped he would recover himself, so they asked David Gilmour  now back in London after a sojourn abroad  to take over Syd's role on stage, and thought Barrett might become their off-stage songwriter. They tried a few gigs as a five-piece. But in the end, they decided they could do without Barrett, and by March 1968 were in their second incarnation and under new management. Set the Controls Barrett went his way with Jenner and King, and later recorded two haunting solo albums  on which Waters, Wright and especially Gilmour helped  before retreating to Cambridge for the rest of his life. The other four acquired a new manager  Steve O'Rourke  and in a state of some consternation finished their second album, A Saucerful of Secrets (begun the previous year). Lyrical duties had now fallen to the bassist Roger Waters.

And apart from 'Jugband Blues'  a disturbing track by Barrett, who contributed little else  the album's standout moments included the title track and Waters' 'Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun'. This hypnotic epic signposted the style the band would expand on in the Seventies, its vision at first more appreciated by an 'intellectual' and European audience. The Floyd played the first free concert in Hyde Park, and laid down the soundtrack for the bizarre Paul Jones movie vehicle, The Committee. They toured continually, developing new material on stage as well as in the studio. And they worked on the experience, in April 1969 revealing an early form of surround-sound at the Royal Festival Hall  their rebuilt 'Azimuth Co-Ordinator'. (The prototype, first constructed and used in 1967, had been stolen.) They worked on their concepts, too - at that concert, performing two long pieces fusing old and new material, entitled 'The Man' and 'The Journey'. So their star continued its inevitable ascent.

In July, the Floyd released More, less a soundtrack than an accompaniment to Barbet Schroder's eponymous film about a group of hippies on the drug trail in Ibiza. The same month, they played live 'atmospherics' to the BBC's live coverage of the first moon landing. In November, they released the double-album Ummagumma, a mixture of live and studio tracks  and that same month reworked its outstanding number, the eerie 'Careful With That Axe, Eugene', for Antonioni's cult film Zabriskie Point. With Ummagumma at Number Five in the UK charts, and a growing reputation in both Europe and the US underground, the Floyd played some of the key festivals of their time  Bath, Antibes, Rotterdam, Montreux  and between October 1970 and November 1971, put out two more albums. Atom Heart Mother, their first Number One, featured the Floyd in their pomp  'I like a bit of pomp,' says Gilmour (who also made his first lyrical contribution with the gentle 'Fat Old Sun').

And Meddle included two timeless and largely instrumental tracks that showcased their lead guitarist in all his vertiginous, keening glory: 'Echoes', which took up the whole of Side One and began with a single 'ping' created almost accidentally by Wright, and 'One of These Days'. Increasingly successful, in 1972 the band was still pushing the boundaries. They shot the film 'Live at Pompei' in a Roman amphitheatre, recorded another movie soundtrack for Schroder  Obscured by Clouds  and performed with the Ballet de Marseille. But more importantly, they began to work on an idea that would become their most popular album and with 45 million sold, the world's third biggest. Provisionally entitled 'Eclipse' and honed through an extensive world tour, The Dark Side of the Moon was released in March 1973, and defies a potted critique here. Demonstrating Waters' talents as both lyricist and conceptualist, it was also a musical tour de force by Gilmour. But Waters was becoming de facto leader of the band  which in public at least was becoming less about the individuals than the experience.

That was (as Barrett had always intended) increasingly visual. The intriguing sleeve artwork commissioned from the ex-Cambridge outfit Hipgnosis was complemented by stage shows featuring crashing aeroplanes, circular projection screens and flaming gongs. There were backing singers on-stage and a guest slot for another pal from Cambridge, the saxophonist Dick Parry. In the dawning age of stadium rock, the Floyd were truly its masters. Or maybe its servants? Even before Dark Side broke Middle America through FM radio  with the single 'Money'  alienation, isolation and mental fragility had long been Waters' themes. As a stadium performer, and a cog in the music business machine, he was becoming more prone to all three. As Barrett's ex-colleague, he had seen them embodied in his old friend. The results were evident in two of his best lyrics  for 'Shine On, You Crazy Diamond' and 'Wish You Were Here'. These tracks were the high points of the Floyd's next LP, also called Wish You Were Here, which was begun in January 1975 and released that summer.

Famously, Barrett briefly appeared unannounced at Abbey Road during the recording of 'Shine On' and shocked the band by his appearance and demeanour. It was the last time any of them saw him  but they were seeing less of each other, too. Personal and musical differences were starting to tell on the band, though it would be several years until these became unbearable  and two more LPs. Which One's Pink? The first was Animals, released in January 1977 (although work had also begun on it in 1975). When this was toured with lavish special effects, including giant inflatables, Waters was dismayed that the crowds kept calling for old hits. In Montreal his patience snapped and he spat into the audience. It was a cathartic moment that gave birth to the Floyd's most ambitious project ever: The Wall, a largely autobiographical reflection by Waters on the nature of love, life and art. The double album charts the progress of a rock star, 'Pink', facing the break-up of his marriage while on tour.

This leads him to review his life from the death of his father - like Waters' killed on the battlefield before he was born - to his spiteful teachers, his business, even his audience. He sees each as a brick in a metaphorical wall between him and the rest of the world. This wall intensifies his isolation, until he imagines the only solution is to become a fascist dictator. When he confronts his madness and deals with his issues, his torments cease and the wall crumbles. The show  in which the band were slowly obscured by a giant wall of cardboard 'bricks'  was the most ambitious the rock world had ever seen, and was also turned into an Alan Parker film, starring Bob Geldof (who would return to the Floyd story 25 years later). The album sold 20 million, and spawned the band's only Number One single, the anti-authoritarian 'Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2'. Though the album had its musical highlights  Gilmour's solo on 'Comfortably Numb' being the most memorable  it was largely a lyrical piece. Waters drove the project and the others fitted in.

They ceded their vision to his increasingly personal direction, and worked together on no new material for more than two years. When they did get back in the studio, it was to record The Final Cut. This prophetically titled album, prompted by the Falklands conflict of 1982 and released the next year, explores themes of remembrance and the undelivered post-war dream  for which Waters' father had given his life. Completely credited to Waters, it was attributed to 'Roger Waters, performed by Pink Floyd' and featured Gilmour's vocals on one track. After three years  during which all four band members had pursued solo projects  Waters announced he was leaving the Floyd and disbanding them. Wright had left the legal entity some time before, transferring to the payroll for The Wall tour and playing no part in The Final Cut, but Gilmour and Mason decided to continue Pink Floyd without its erstwhile 'leader'. A turbulent period followed, but agreement was eventually reached: Waters would continue to perform the songs on which he worked while he was with the band, as well as new solo material.

Gilmour  now first among equals  and Mason would continue to record and perform with Wright as Pink Floyd. In 1987 came their next album, A Momentary Lapse of Reason  which emphatically proved that the Floyd could exist without Waters. The subsequent world tour, which also spawned the live Delicate Sound of Thunder, was the band's longest and most successful ever. Over four years, 5.5 million people saw 200 shows, including one on a floating stage in Venice (which again earned them a venue-ban) while Thunder became the first rock album to be played in space, by the Soviet-French Soyuz-7 mission. 1994's album and tour, The Division Bell, broke similar records; but more, it showed Gilmour and the band on a creative roll, with Wright contributing to some of the writing and Gilmour forging a new writing partnership with his wife, the novelist Polly Samson  'High Hopes' being one of their new classics. However, since then, the Floyd has recorded no new material in the studio. Not that they have been inactive  nor untouched by sorrows.

In 2003, the band's manager Steve O'Rourke died from a stroke and the three-man Floyd played 'Fat Old Sun' and Dark Side's 'Great Gig in the Sky', at his funeral in Chichester Cathedral. In 2006, Syd Barrett died from pancreatic cancer. And in 2008 Rick Wright followed him  but not before he had helped re-write the Pink Floyd story a couple more times. In 2005, prompted by Bob Geldof, the band decided to perform at Live 8 (on the 20th anniversary of Live Aid) and invited Waters to join them. He accepted and  sharing vocals with Gilmour  they played two numbers from Dark Side, plus 'Wish You Were Here' and 'Comfortably Numb'. It was an epoch-making moment in rock history, and their final group hug became one of Live 8's iconic images.

After that, the three-man Floyd performed together on two occasions  once during a solo gig by Gilmour in 2006 (Wright played the whole three-month tour and was 'in great form', says Gilmour); and again at an all-star memorial tribute to Barrett in 2007. Waters also appeared at the gig but was unable to join his old colleagues due to a previous appointment. Still, that was not the end of their association. On 10 July 2010, with some of their favourite musicians, Waters and Gilmour performed a few Floyd songs  plus Phil Spector's 'To Know Him Is To Love Him'!  at a private charity event in Oxfordshire. And on 12 May 2011, during one of Waters' Wall concerts at the London O2, Gilmour appeared on top of the wall as of old, to sing and play his parts on 'Comfortably Numb'. Nick Mason, who was at the gig, then joined them for the final song, 'Outside the Wall'. Departing the stage, as they had before, Waters played trumpet, Gilmour mandolin and Mason tambourine.

The audience was stunned and delighted. But a handful of concerts was never going to sate the interest of the diehard fans. In 1995, they were rewarded with the double-album PULSE, all recorded on the Division Bell tour and containing the first complete live version of Dark Side. A live compilation of The Wall from 1980-1  called Is There Anybody Out There?  followed in 2000, and then a re-mastered 'best of', called Echoes. There have also been collectors' editions of Dark Side, a complete works box-set  Oh, By the Way  and now (autumn 2011) an extensive reissue campaign by EMI, with new packaging and production values, not to mention some rare and archival recordings that go back to the Barrett days. Nor, as individuals, have the survivors from those times been strangers to the studio or stage these last dozen or so years (and before).

Gilmour put out his third solo album, On an Island, in 2006; Waters has had a prolific and varied career since 1986; Mason and Wright released one or two collaborative albums respectively. There have been awards and honours along the way: induction into both the US and UK Rock 'n' Roll Halls of Fame; Sweden's Polar Music Prize in 2008 for their 'monumental contribution over the decades to the fusion of art and music in the development of popular culture'. And in 2010, The Royal Mail used Division Bell visuals on their stamps, also creating a unique sheet using only the Floyd's imagery. So is that the end of the Floyd's road? Do they still exist? Will they perform and record again? It now seems highly unlikely that the surviving members will ever convene under the name chosen by Syd Barrett, nor under it make new music. But who's to say? For at the heart of Pink Floyd, there has always been an enigma... Best Pink Floyd Songs - Top Ten List - TheTopTens® Best Pink Floyd Songs I went into a trance while listening to this song... simply amazing... Best solo of all time!

dark and light solos! It was either this or Wish You Were Here, but this song epitomizes exactly why I think there is no better guitarist than David Gilmour, songwriter than Roger Waters, or band as excellent as Pink Floyd! A clear sky, puff puff and cough alongside this epic song... Shakespeare, wordsworth, keats, frost are good; but roger waters is the best poet of all "time"! Dear site admins, please fix the bug in your site and put "Time" back on number 1, where it belongs. Best lyrics of all time! This song speaks so much to me And the drums are amazing And of course that solo! "And you run, and you run to catch up with the sun but its sinking. Racing around to come up behind you again.." Best part of this song along with the guitar solo. The lyrics are so relatable to me. How fast time goes. - BrianScott01 3 Wish You Were Here How I wish... How I wish I was born in 1960 to live the most impressive years of music. Such a perfect song, with beautiful vocals from the great David Gilmour. This is a music you can listen everyday!

Somehow, this song makes me smile even if I am really sad. It kinda speaks to me. Oh how I wish I was born in the 60s Music today has lost its quality When I listen to this song I remember one of my old friend we had a same idea about music and politic. F This song has the unique quality to make me cry every time I listen to it and still I have a kind of smile on my face, remembering who I left behind. Simply an Icon V 117 Comments 4 Shine on You Crazy Diamond If anyone has the time to spend a half an hour just to listen to the 2 parts to this song, they will realize it should be number 1. The orchestration is way beyond anything recorded ever When I was 12, my dad gave me the Wish You Were Here album to listen to. This was my first rock song and a really life changing moment. It is still my favorite: the way the intro seems suspended in time with that fantastic deep synth pad, Gilmour's amazing blues solos, the thrilling moment when Mason comes in on drums, and the best lyrics Roger has ever written. The end of part 1 drifts off into infinity.

Part 2 is also incredible. The song is really touching when you understand the Syd Barret context. Top class. Melodic to the core and very symbolic lyrics, great intro, almost hypnotic Awesome jaw dropping experience of pure, unadulterated rock! V 97 Comments 5 Echoes This is actually in my top songs of all the songs I like. Its awesome! It's 23 minutes of pure awesomeness- not one boring second in the whole song. The best! Epic 23 minute song, it will stay with you for the rest of your life, 'masterpiece' falls short of the truth of this song Without Echoes there wouldn't be Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals, or The Wall. Plus it also has very powerful lyrics and hypnotic intrumentals/sound effects. Echoes shines brighter with every listen. It will eventually outshine Shine On You Crazy Diamond if you listen to Echoes enough. A great beat comes in at 70. Nice bird chirpping and really cool wind. Too bad music isn't like this anymore. Definitely defines Pink Floyd and shows off their progressive and psychedelic capabilities at the same time.

I would totally recommend this to anyone who is patient. The rewards are tremendous if you listen all the way through. I would rate this song a 12 out of 10. My favourite song. V 92 Comments 6 Dogs This is guitar solo sublime. A wonderful blend of the sweetest tones leaves me endlessly on repeat. It is pure genius - one of the less obvious greats. For the taoists, this IS Floyd at their best. A timeless masterpiece, unprecedented musical work, unprecedented lyrics and a strong message that lingers in you long after those 17 minutes of absolute heaven fade out with one of the most powerful finales of all time. Dogs is the best piece of music I have ever listened to and everyone owes it to themselves to listen to this progressive-rock masterpiece. It is literally the perfect song. There is an amazing guitar line in this song and the double-guitar sequence has to be one of the greatest. This song is a roller coaster ride. Some much angry and emotion felt in this song and the synth play is amazing especially in the middle of the song. V 50 Comments 7 Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 2 Hard choice but yeah A.B.I.W.

part II is it. We dont need NO education. Thats a double negative... seems like you do. XD - fireinside96 The famous rebellion song, I haven't met anybody who doesn't know of this masterpiece From the 'Wall' album. Strong drums, a well-known base line and distinctive guitar parts in the background with a smooth, but edgy guitar solo. Am I the only one who likes part 1 better? V 92 Comments 8 Hey You Ah, what a great song. It'll never grow old. Its got that quality, just, dammit, I can't find the word, but it's the perfect Pink Floyd song, hands down. The guitar solo, the intensity of the song, it all just seems perfect together. Plus, its on Due Date which I reckon is the funniest road movie in a long long time - JesusOfSuburbia07 1st track of the 2nd disc of 'The Wall'. The song starts off with a solo acoustic guitar playing in the classical style, the melody resembling the middle section of A Pillow of Winds, with the fretless bass (similar to the opening of "Pigs") joining in shortly after.

Next to join in is the Fender Rhodes electric piano, David Gilmour's vocals, and overdubbed acoustic guitar and drums at the start of the second verse. In the middle is a guitar solo which is played over the main riff of the song "Another Brick in the Wall". After the solo, Roger Waters takes over on lead vocals for the rest of the song. Hey You! Vote For This! It's a great song. It has lots of feelings. Waters and Gilmour really showed their best on this song. They really show their true feelings... And I love it... The many parts of human emotion are expressed in the song. The lyrics are so great. - Zizz V 66 Comments 9 Money Wow! I expected this to be number one or two! That being said, picking the best Pink Floyd song is borderline impossible and we're all basically just splitting hairs... One word to describe this song: trippy. And walking basslines aren't something that most people associate with the word trippy, which just makes it all the more trippy. And then you have the 7/4 time signature. The time signature of champions.

This song is like one of those really cool, really weird dreams where nothing makes sense but yet it all does. This is the real pink floyd. Although I do really like wish you were here, I think its one of the most overrated songs in history. It's a very nice song that's easy on the ears. Pink floyd is NOT easy on the ears, and therefore wish you were here is, in my opinion, very out of character for them. But songs like money are just so COOL. This is not the best Pink Floyd song, but I will always like this song a lot because it was the song that got me into older music. I used to like pop music a lot. But then I heard about The Dark Side of the Moon and how awesome it was, so I bought it to see what it was like. I listened to small parts of the songs and decided that I didn't like it. I was going to delete it when I decided to listen to Money. I instantly loved it and listened to the whole album and loved it also. Then I started to buy other Pink Floyd albums and other bands too. Then I realized that pop music wasn't very good and it was just mainstream stuff with no emotion.

I really like prog rock now. I'm thankful for this song because if I never listened to it, I might have never learned about Pink Floyd and what real music is. Yeah man, pop music is trash compared to Pink Floyd The Contenders 11 Brain Damage This song is just brain-blowing! Every time I listen to it, it gives me shivers. "There's someone in my head but it's not me" Best Floyd Song This Is the Dark Side Of The Moon summed up First time I listened to this song was with headphones on full volume, in the dark. A song has never hit home harder. - RIDDLER2K15 The lunatic is in my head 12 Pigs (Three Different Ones) A great song, this needs to be higher on the list. Everything from the lyrics to the guitar work makes this song a brilliant masterpiece! - matty925 So amazingly funky. This song is a brilliant piece of music by Pink Floyd. Especially the 20 minute version live in Cleveland. The best song by Pink Floyd 13 Have a Cigar 3rd track of 'Wish You Were Here'.

A perfect rock song, in my opinion A song of sleaze and suspicion, it paints a very strong image in my mind of Roger, David, Syd, etc, all staring at a salesperson with distrust, fearful of the capitalization of the music industry. It's a warning to all, and I love it. Nice lyrics. I love this one very much. (this stupid minimum quality thing sucks! ) Perfect. Should be on the top 10! Surprised it isn't. V 9 Comments 14 The Great Gig in the Sky Part of what amazes me about this song is how it conveys the whole spectrum of human emotion without using any lyrics. It's just beautiful piano, gripping drums, and probably one of the best vocal performances I have ever heard in my life. It's hard to believe this isn't in the top 5. Come on the vocals are awesome! The dark side of the moon is the best floyd album... I must say... And great gig in the sky's gotta go higher... Every floyd member is magical in the album I love the song! The most amazing thing is the psychedelic effect that the masterpiece has on you.

I wish the band were more recognized for the beauty of what they've done. They deserve more credit and more recognition and they are underrated. The Great Gig In The Sky is so beautiful. The piano, the beats, the vocals. Its such a great pleasure to listen to the song. - Zizz Love this song! Vocals are awesome! Pink Floyd doesn't get the credit they deserve! V 14 Comments 15 High Hopes This should be among the top 5 best songs of Floyd... Amazing lyrics blend with perfect vocals and it ends with one of the best solos by David Gilmore... I think this is by far the best song by Pink Floyd. Absolutely breath taking and profusely sentimental. You can't have enough of this song. 5/5 for me At one point the song goes into a epic war theme Greatest Pink Floyd song EVER Unbelievable song.. V 151 Comments 16 Learning to Fly Oh man. this song means so much. It just feels so amazingly freeing when you hear it, you just want to soar and float into the clouds to never come out again. this song should be second to Comfortably Numb. Its actually a long metaphor for flying and for doing a new thing.

in the middle of the song nick mason is heard speaking in the radio for a lesson GREATEST SONG EVER My personal favorite next to Any Color You Like which is also surprisingly low on the list. Learning to Fly makes me feel motivated, remorseful and excited all at once. It's beautiful. Perfect. Deserves better than 28 come on! Language isn't advanced enough to describe what this song means. This song opens up your mind and soul when you listen to it V 16 Comments 17 Coming Back to Life Morons it should be in top 5 all those disagreeing should go back to music school and should start with justin bieber For real? What do you have against Justin Bieber other then that he's a musical genius? This song should be up there at 1 or 2 or 3... simply brilliant it doesn't get any more peaceful :)Ditto for Us and Them! This song should be in top ten list... It is such a soothing song which calms your mind and melodious P.S. Justin Bieber is nowhere near a musical genius. V 137 Comments 18 Welcome to the Machine It has amazing sound effects. This song is so underrated.

The lyrics are amazing and the sound is awesome. When I first heard it, I was amazed. I was impressed. The sound effects mixed with the acoustic guitar are mind blowing. It's a shame that people don't full appreciate the quality of the song. I don't see how this isn't Top 10... Easily one of the most emphatic Pink Floyd songs. It incorporates so much with the synthesizers and the acoustic guitar, as well as the message that is sent and what the song is really about. 2nd track of 'Wish You Were Here'. Heavily processed synthesizers and guitars, as well as a wide and varied range of tape effects. One of the most heartfelt songs they have made (and there aren't few...) The 10 Best Pink Floyd Songs - Stereogum The 10 Best Pink Floyd Songs Doug Moore | June 20, 2013 - 12:02 pm Share < br />this article: CREDIT: Pink Floyd Time has a marvelous ability to render the absurd familiar. Mankind can harvest vast energy from the basic stuff of matter, using means that only people with considerable higher education can even describe accurately.

But nobody’s taken aback by this fact because, welp, they’ve been doing that shit since your grandpa’s time. Humans can fly! We cured smallpox! You can talk to anyone on the planet instantaneously! These facts are insane when you think about them, but nobody does because we’re used to them. ( My favorite Louis C.K. bit deals with this phenomenon, but I digress.) In the same way, Pink Floyd — one of the most popular musical groups of all time — has been normalized by their ubiquity. Their record sales figures alone boggle the mind. According to Wikipedia, they’ve sold roughly 250 million albums. The human brain tends to gloss over numbers of that size when they’re delivered without context, so here’s some. In 1990, there were just under 250 million people living in the United States of America. Pink Floyd has effectively sold an album to every single one of those people. That puts them ahead of Celine Dion, AC/DC, the Rolling Stones, and ABBA, among others. Only the Beatles, Elvis, Michael Jackson, Led Zeppelin, Madonna, and Elton John have done better.

And that figure doesn’t include all of the people who’ve pirated their albums, or who never bought their albums but have heard their music on the radio for decades, or who’ve lived with family members and spouses who played Pink Floyd in their homes, and so on. Their cultural reach is epically, imperially huge. And that reach does not end with their album and merchandise sales, which continue to pile up almost 20 years after their demise. Pink Floyd’s songs have been covered, referenced, and parodied into oblivion. Planetarium laser shows set to their music are so popular that they’ve become a stoner cliché. The poster of six naked women with Floyd album covers painted on their backs is a dorm-room staple, rivaling Dalí’s The Persistence of Memory and the Scarface film poster in popularity. Even Pink Floyd tribute acts do incredibly well: Easy Star All Stars’ dub reggae revision of The Dark Side of the Moon held onto a spot in the reggae charts for five years. This band is so popular, and has been for so long, that it’s basically impossible to imagine the rock/pop landscape without them.

They’re like Isaac Asimov — many of their tropes seem hackneyed now, but that’s because everyone has been ripping them off for decades. And yet, in spite of their impossible sales and disarming omnipresence, Pink Floyd might be the most unlikely success story in rock history — an extremely dark, thoroughly experimental group that began their career with a madman at the helm and with a ( partially media-devised ) affinity for scary underground drugs. The list of 60s-era pop music diktats they gleefully violated over the course of their career is too long to enumerate, but here’s a partial version: – Do not write 25-minute songs. – Do not devote entire albums to strange formal experiments. – Do not neglect to release a single for much of your peak creative period. – Do not go crazy. – Do not sing about going crazy. – Do not bum everyone out with harsh critiques of your society. – Do not spit on your fans , even if they’re being rude. And this stuff is just the beginning. Even by rock-god standards, Pink Floyd were sublimely bizarre, both as an artistic entity and as a group of people.

Though it’s impossible to imagine the 2013 rock/pop landscape without them, it’s just as tough to imagine an equally daring group blowing up today. So how did Pink Floyd get so immensely popular? Some of their success can be traced to timing and serendipity. They formed in 1965, when rock’s frontiers were wild and unexplored — there was still plenty of territory for them to pioneer. Their association with the psychedelic drug scene, accidental though it may have been, helped make them a youth-culture buzz band. Chief lyricist/bassist Roger Waters’s turn towards social and psychological ruminations in the 1970s resonated with the widespread societal soul-searching of the era. Exogenous market forces helped as well, of course. Music culture was more homogenized back then, and people still bought records. None of this is to suggest that Pink Floyd succeeded the way they did mostly because of luck or timing. The main reason that Pink Floyd is so beloved — and this fact sometimes gets lost amidst the heaps of cultural baggage and ephemera that surround them — is because they were a fucking great band.

It’s impossible for fans to even describe their sound without spewing breathless superlatives, so I won’t go down that road. (Yet.) After all, you already know what Pink Floyd sounds like. Who doesn’t? This week, the entire Pink Floyd catalog was made available on streaming-music service Spotify, so it’s an apt opportunity for us to cull that catalog and come up with a list of the ten best Pink Floyd songs. Uh, about that: I’m not sure these are the ten best Pink Floyd songs. Hell, I’m not even sure these are my own ten favorite Pink Floyd songs. This band released 14 albums. Some of those albums focus on oddball experimentation — Atom Heart Mother, Ummagumma, and the adapted film scores More and Obscured By Clouds. Some of them came out during transitional or waning periods in the band’s discography — Saucerful Of Secrets, The Final Cut, A Momentary Lapse Of Reason, and The Division Bell.

These albums are (mostly) good, but they’re outshone by the towering brilliance of the remaining six: The Piper At The Gates of Dawn, Meddle, The Dark Side Of The Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals, and The Wall. Big swathes of these six albums deserve to be included. To make matters more complicated, several of them are organized into unified suites that don’t break down easily. I considered including all of Dark Side and The Wall as single tunes, but that’d be a cop-out. I also elected not to unify non-consecutive suites, so you won’t see “Shine On You Crazy Diamond I-IX” or “Another Brick In The Wall (Parts 1-3).” Ultimately, I chose the entries based on whether I’d be able to forgive myself for excluding them. (Even that didn’t really do the trick, but in the face of deadlines, ugly decisions must be made.) In the process, I left out a lot of choice cuts from the Floyd catalog. Put my picks on trial in the comments. 10.

“Astronomy Domine” (from The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, 1967) Even 46 years after the release of “Astronomy Domine,” it remains one of the oddest tunes ever to launch the recording career of popular rock band. The vocals — usually the focal point of a rock song, especially at the time — consist of guitarist Syd Barrett and keyboardist Richard Wright chanting nonsense verse about space, which is weird enough on its own. Their surroundings get even spookier: Nick Mason’s staggering leadoff fill, Barrett’s pinched-nerve intro riff, the spiraling chromatic chorus, and producer Norman Smith’s encompassing collage of astral beeps and echo-effect clatter. Despite being the only Pink Floyd song that lyrically deals directly with space, “Astronomy Domine” played a huge role in launching space rock , which remains in orbit today. It’s also significant because it’s the most succinct expression of Barrett’s spectacular but short-lived chemistry with Floyd. The drug-induced breakdown that eventually forced him from the band would color their work’s emotional character for the remainder of their run. 9.

“Echoes” (from Meddle, 1971) A buddy of mine used to play a fun game with this tune. When he was in college, he’d go to the local watering hole, which had a copy of Meddle in its jukebox. He’d pay for 12 songs, the first of which was always the 24-minute “Echoes.” The bartender would become agitated as soon as its opening chime cut through the air. The playlist would then return to a normal roster of boozy bar jams, until it reached its last song…which was, of course, always “Echoes.” This isn’t Pink Floyd’s longest song; that honor goes to the ungainly but beautiful title track from Atom Heart Mother. It is, however, their first wholly successful effort at writing and recording a side-length multipart epic. Conceived in pieces and composed collaboratively by the entire band, “Echoes” cleared the path for the ambitious full-album compositions that Pink Floyd would crank out for the rest of the decade. Fittingly, “Echoes” has echoed in other famous musical works.

Check out Mason’s robotically crisp snare/closed-hat attack starting at around 7:30 of the killer Live at Pompeii version , which foreshadows Phil Selway’s drum tone on Radiohead’s OK Computer. Even more uncanny is the similarity between the song’s instrumental refrain and the overture from Andrew Lloyd Weber’s 1986 musical The Phantom Of The Opera. Waters elected not to file plagiarism litigation over the matter because, as he put it, “Life’s too long to bother with suing Andrew fucking Lloyd Weber.” 8. “Comfortably Numb” (from The Wall, 1979) The Wall rightly has a reputation as the first of Roger Waters’s two quasi-solo albums under the Pink Floyd name. Ironically, one of its best cuts involved only a gentle touch from his creative hand. “Comfortably Numb” is mostly a David Gilmour tune; Waters contributed only lyrics and a snippet of chord work.

(He also mumbles Dylan-style through the verses; the rest of the vocals are all Gilmour.) People often confuse “Comfortably Numb” for a song about drug addiction, but Waters’s real lyrical inspiration was a 1977 incident in which he was forced to soldier through a lengthy gig in Philly while under the doctor-directed influence of tranquilizers. The real story on this tune, though, is Gilmour’s two legendary guitar solos. On the eve of the 80s, he had adopted a steely lead tone that foreshadowed the arena-metal flash of the decade to come. Of course, there’s no self-indulgent shredding here — just Gilmour’s pointillistic precision and impeccable phrasing, which are more than enough to set this drifting song ablaze. 7. “Money” (from The Dark Side Of The Moon, 1973) “Money” is a rite of passage. Whenever a young lad or lass picks up a bass guitar and learns the ways of rock ’n’ roll rhythm, there comes a time when he or she must grapple with the challenge of odd time signatures.

And when that time comes, the bass line from “Money” awaits. Though the most iconic features of “Money” are its 7/4 verse rhythm and its opening tape loop, everything else in the song is equally great. Waters’s lyrics ridicule middle-class greed — a theme he would memorably return to several times on the albums that followed Dark Side. Wright and Gilmour dart in and out of view during the song’s first half, adding sting to the rhythm section’s sardonic funk. The lengthy lead section is outrageous—session sax man Dick Perry gets things cooking with a wheedling blues solo, which in turn sets up an explosive wet-dry-wet sequence from Gilmour. Even Mason kinda rages out beneath Gilmour’s last solo, flaunting the chops that hide behind his typically spare, metronomic timekeeping. “Money” is a rare show of pure force on a largely abstract album; no wonder that it’s become one of Pink Floyd’s most omnipresent tunes. But it’s not quite as omnipresent as… 6.

“The Happiest Days of Our Lives/Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)” (from The Wall, 1979) This two-song sequence is so famous and popular, so thoroughly internalized and referenced and joked around with and bitched about, that it’s almost hard to think about as actual music. It’s more of a cultural artifact now — a collectively-owned heirloom, like The Great Gatsby or Star Wars. Ironically, even the members of Pink Floyd agree that “Happiest Days/Another Brick (Part 2)” doesn’t really sound like a Pink Floyd song. Two of its most identifiable features — Mason’s four-on-the-floor beat and the gang of children who sing the second chorus — were included at the behest of producer Bob Ezrin. Waters, who despised disco, found both ideas distasteful until he heard the fully assembled version of the song. And it is good that he relented. Had he followed through on his original desire to write a shorter song expressing his frustration with Britain’s schooling system, the world would’ve been deprived of one of its greatest anti-authoritarian youth anthems.

Even after decades of endless critical dissection and commercial overexposure, “Happiest Days/Another Brick (Part 2)” remains a song of incredible resonance. We still don’t need no thought control. 5. “Pigs (Three Different Ones)” (from Animals, 1977) By the mid-70s, punk rock had begun to take hold in the United Kingdom. Psychedelic drugs were out; huffing glue and punching cops were in. Punk musicians and fans routinely slammed Floyd as exemplars of contemporary rock’s dowdy politics and sonic flabbiness. These criticisms purportedly influenced Floyd’s work on Animals. You wouldn’t know it by the music itself, which sounds stark but sprawls hard — roughly 39 of its 42 minutes are spread over just three songs. It also gives more space to Gilmour’s ever-glorious soloing, which is at its weirdest on “Pigs” — he uses a talk box to imitate the titular animal’s squeal, and even rips some fretless bass leads while Waters holds down the rhythm guitar. The lyrics on Animals are a different story.

Each of those three monster tunes compares a British social caste to an animal, and the comparisons are not flattering. “Pigs” snipes at upper-crusters who cynically exploit the insecurities of others: “Bus-stop rat bag, charade you are / You fucked-up old hag, charade you are / You radiate cold shafts of broken glass / You’re nearly worth a laugh,” Waters sneers during the second verse. His notorious spitting incident took place during a performance of the song. Oink, oink. 4. “Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts I-V)” (from Wish You Were Here, 1975) The emotional aftershock of Syd Barrett’s crack-up reverberates through much of Pink Floyd’s catalog, but only “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” addresses him directly. The famous episode in which Barrett — fat, bald, disoriented, and unrecognizable to his former friends — stopped by Abbey Road Studios unannounced in the midst of the song’s mixing process is one of the saddest and most poignant anecdotes in all of rock history.

Waters, who considered Barrett an avatar for the ravaging effects of 20th-century society on the human soul, reputedly broke down in tears. Floyd’s great sorrow over Barrett’s fate seeps from every note of their group-composed tribute to him. Waters delivers some of his most direct and heartfelt lyrics over Mason’s 6/8 sway: “Now there’s a look in your eyes / Like black holes in the sky…Come on you raver, you seer of visions / Come on you painter, you piper, you prisoner, and shine!” Wright, rarely in the spotlight, opens the song with a beautiful synth collage and supports its dramatic climax with weeping chordal organs. And the Gilmour lead that starts around 6:10? Pretty sure that’s the sound of man’s soul draining away. 3.

“Brain Damage/Eclipse” (from The Dark Side Of The Moon, 1973) These two songs are often collectively mistaken for the title track from Dark Side (there isn’t one) — “Brain Damage” uses the title as its chorus and runs seamlessly into the finale “Eclipse.” Together, they provide the emotional zenith to one of the most seamlessly constructed albums of all time, and what a zenith it is. It’s basically impossible to address the emotional impact of “Brain Damage/Eclipse” without discussing about the album as a whole, so instead I’ll say this: engineer Alan Parsons (yes, that one ) achieved one of the great production feats of the analog era with these two tunes.

The balance between spare, nervous verse and lush, organ-and-choir-driven chorus on “Brain Damage” perfectly matches the lyrics, which see Waters agonize over his psychological similarity to his crazy ex-bandmate — “And if your head explodes with dark forebodings too / I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon.” And the way that the stately, all-encompassing swing of “Eclipse” collapses, with signature Pink Floyd circularity, into the heartbeat that opens the album…yeah, you can start to understand why this peculiar little record has sold well. 2. “Dogs” (from Animals, 1977) This song holds a special place in my heart. The first time I heard it was the (17-minute-long) moment at which I realized that Pink Floyd was no dinosaur hippie group, but a musical and emotional powerhouse that will probably never stop being relevant as long as Western civilization remains a scary, tragic place. Like the other big tracks on Animals, “Dogs” compares humanity to its eponymous beast. It boasts the most incisive and affecting lyrics of the three, though: a brutal examination of a conniving businessman’s flaws and weaknesses.

The final verse summarizes its subject’s lifetime of abjection with such devastating precision that it’s tough to listen to. Only “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” matches it for sheer intensity. “Dogs” also marks the career high-water mark for David Gilmour’s lead playing. Since Gilmour occupies a high seat in the rock-soloist canon, “Dogs” has a considerable claim to the title of Best Guitar Song Ever. (Got a better pick? Let’s hear it.) His playing on this song channels so much heart through such economical phrasing that…well, here come the superlatives. Just listen. 1. “Wish You Were Here” (from Wish You Were Here, 1975) Let’s be straight: every song on this list could’ve landed in the top slot. I chose “Wish You Were Here” because it’s the strongest distillation of the traits that made this band great. For all of Pink Floyd’s relentless progressivism — the superhuge songs, the rock operas, the musique concrète influence, the zany stagecraft — they would have never have achieved so much if they weren’t able to reign the weirdness in and write pristine songs.

“They write great songs” is maybe the worst rock-writer cliché, but for Pink Floyd, it’s inescapably true. And this one wasn’t even a single! “Wish You Were Here” finds all of Floyd’s finest attributes present and in perfect balance: sophisticated studio trickery, gorgeous instrumental textures, a timeless chord progression, restrained-but-powerful leads from Gilmour and Wright, a Syd Barrett nod (the “cold steel rail” line refers to a Barrett lyric from The Madcap Laughs) and a refrain that will lodge in your braincase the first time you hear it and stay there for the rest of your life. It manages this crazy achievement in just five minute and thirty-four seconds. And it organizes the whole affair around the emotion that defines Pink Floyd’s best work: an aching, cosmic loneliness that every living person has felt at one time or another. And THAT is why this weird-ass band has sold 250 million records. Listen to this playlist on Spotify here . Another Brick In The Wall Tweet Another Brick In The Wall In 1980, Pink Floyd's Another Brick In The Wall, (Part 2) started a four week run at No.1 on the US singles chart.

The song received a Grammy nomination for Best Performance by a Rock Duo or Group, but Floyd lost to Bob Seger's "Against the Wind." "Another Brick In The Wall, Part 2" was an instant hit in the UK, released on November 16, 1979, and selling 340,000 copies in five days. A week later, it was #1 in the UK, remaining there for five weeks, and by January 1980 had sold over a million copies. It topped the US singles chart for four weeks from March 22, 1980, and was #1 in Canada, Israel, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, and West Germany, reaching the Top 5 in a further eight countries. It also hit #1 in South Africa, after which it was banned, on May 6, 1980, when black school children used it to condemn educational apartheid in Soweto.

Co-producer Bob Ezrin had suggested "Another Brick In The Wall, Part 2" as a single with a 4/4 beat, but since the song has just one repeated verse, engineer Nick Griffiths, at Pink Floydï¿½s Britannia Row Studios in London, was asked to find some children to add colour to the second verse. In a 2009 interview with Guitar World, Ezrin explained that, having produced "School's Out" with Alice Cooper, he "had a thing about kids on record." Griffiths accordingly contacted Alun Renshaw, Head of Music at Islington Green School, who provided the schoolkids. According to Nick Mason, Griffiths was asked originally just to provide two or three kids singing in "a rather pathetic voice." Griffiths was a fan of Todd Rundgren, who had, on his double album Todd, recorded a live audience singing one of his songï¿½s choruses in New York, and then taken the tape and overdubbed another whole audience singing the harmony in San Francisco. The song was "Sons Of 1984," which dovetails rather neatly into the Wall albumï¿½s themes.

At any rate, Griffiths was allowed to record a much larger group of schoolkids, which he did, in the 40 minutes he was allotted by the school. David Gilmour plays the solo on a vintage 1955 Gibson Les Paul Gold Top guitar, originally played directly through the mixing desk, and the recording subsequently played back through an amplifier in the studio, to be re-recorded with more ambience. The solo is given extra weight and tension by the contrasting and changing chords of the keyboards underneath the guitar. David Gilmourï¿½s guitar solo, without any of his trademark tremolo or distortion, is a masterpiece of rhythmic precision, a fluid exposition of surefooted interlinked riffing, virtually a masterclass in how to play a solo - and it was the first take. "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2" is one of three Pink Floyd songs included in The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's list of 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll, curated by Jim Henke.

The others are "See Emily Play" and "Money." Donï¿½t you just love it when a song like this travels the world and affects peoples lives, makes people think about change, makes people realize they can do better, or try and improve their life for good? This had to be a good thing. Pink Floyd - Another Brick In The Wall, Part Two (Official Music Video) - YouTube Pink Floyd - Another Brick In The Wall, Part Two (Official Music Video) Want to watch this again later? Sign in to add this video to a playlist. Need to report the video? Sign in to report inappropriate content. Rating is available when the video has been rented. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later. Published on Aug 9, 2014 The official promo video for 'Another Brick In The Wall, Part 2' by Pink Floyd, taken from the album 'The Wall', originally released in 1979. One of the most acclaimed concept albums of all time, The Wall is renowned as Roger Waters' Rock Opera dealing with abandonment and personal isolation. Featuring the unique artwork of Gerald Scarfe, the album also yielded the US & UK No.

1 hit Another Brick In The Wall Pt2., and was subsequently adapted for cinema by Alan Parker featuring Bob Geldof in the lead role. The album was re-mastered in 2011 and Discovery (1CD), Experience (2CD), Immersion (6CD) and vinyl editions are currently available. Go to for more details. The definitive Early Years box set, released 11th November 2016 Purchase the Boxset 27 DISC COLLECTION ON CD/DVD/BLU-RAY INCLUDES: + Many hours of rare and unreleased music & video + 14 Hours of video includes restored footage + original 4.0 Quad mixes / BBC sessions/live recordings + rare tracks including more than 20 previously unreleased + historic TV performances, live concerts and 3 feature films + Remixed 5.1 audio for 'Live At Pompeii' footage + collectable memorabilia +100+ photos, most previously unseen + early singles + B sides on CD & vinyl * 7 book-style packages, each with multiple discs. 6 are dedicated to a specific period and include related memorabilia and many unseen photos. * Box bonus package includes collector's audio and video.

Box includes bonus larger replica memorabilia (posters, flyers, etc.) plus 5 x reissued replica 7" singles, mastered from the original analogue tapes. ALSO AVAILABLE ON 11TH NOVEMBER 2016: + 2-CD/Download/Streaming set - 'The Early Years - CRE/ATION 1967-1972’ * The 6 year-specific packages will be made available in early 2017. The bonus package and larger memorabilia is exclusive to this box set.

Question: Which was the only No. 1 hit for Pink Floyd?
Answer: ANOTHER BRICK IN THE WALL