12 Pink Floyd Hits That We Love To Listen to Again and Again
The ongoing feud between Pink Floyd powerhouses David Gilmour and Roger Waters has gotten real ugly at times, and it’s pretty much reduced fans’ hopes of a band reunion from slim to none. “I don't think you’ll find very much support from Roger and David for working together,” drummer Nick Mason recently told Forbes, adding, though, that he’d personally be game if a miracle reconciliation ever happened.
It’s been almost 20 years since the band officially last played together for a charity event in 2005. “The Live 8 thing was great, but it was closure. It was like sleeping with your ex-wife. There’s no future for Pink Floyd,” Gilmour said at the time, dousing any hopes that the one-off show would lead to further gigs featuring him, Waters, Mason, and Rick Wright (who sadly passed away three years later in 2008).
Still, the band of psychedelic- and progressive-rock pioneers (co-founded by original member Syd Barrett in 1965) created a long list of albums and songs still revered by their fans. From early releases such as “Arnold Layne" and “See Emily Play" through songs on 2014’s The Endless River album, their third and final release after Waters’ departure in 1985, the guys’ music never ceases to transfix the listener.
Here, 12 of Pink Floyd’s greatest hits to escape into as you slip on some headphones…
12. “Dogs” (1977)
“The last line of the first [guitar] solo, I believe, is a three-part descending augmented chord. Which is quite nice, and I was very proud of it; I thought it was very clever,” Gilmour told Guitar World of this popular 17-minute Animals tune he wrote with Waters.
11. “Us and Them” (1974)
Composed by Wright with lyrics from Waters and lead vocals by Gilmour, this powerful track’s first verse “is about going to war, how on the front line we don’t get much chance to communicate with one another, because someone else has decided that we shouldn’t,” Waters told Louder’s Classic Rock, noting that it also tackles such heavy themes as “civil liberties, racism and color prejudice.”
10. “Time” (1974)
“The reason it’s a good song is because it describes the predicament of anybody who…suddenly realizes that time is going really, really fast,” Waters, who wrote it when he was 29, told Rolling Stone. “It makes you start to philosophize about life and what is important and how to derive joy from that.”
9. “One of These Days” (1971)
“One of these days I’m going to cut you into little pieces…” This “fizzing energetic [Meddle] opener,” as Guitar World put it, “demonstrates the group’s psychedelic jam tendencies, yet it remains infectiously tuneful as it boogies along like a stoner-rock version of ZZ Top’s ‘La Grange.’”
8. “Shine on You Crazy Diamond” (1975)
“Roger’s paean to [original member] Syd. I’ve always loved this song. I love the words,” Gilmour told Mojo about this Waters-penned tune, noting it always reminds him of his friend, a brilliant yet troubled artist. “You can’t sing, ‘Now there’s a look in your eyes like black holes in the sky’ without thinking about Syd. Or … ‘you seer of visions, come on you painter, you piper, you prisoner.’”
7. “Echoes” (1971)
This closing track off of 1971’s Meddle “feels like a eureka moment for the band,” raves Billboard, adding it’s “the first time they’d had a central motif (that monster proto-Phantom of the Opera riff) strong enough to build ten-plus minutes of music around.”
6. “Run Like Hell” (1980)
This driving tune was initially a warning to flee The Wall’s dreaded worms, but co-writer Waters once stated on a radio show that he “tried to move the emphasis away from that and it’s just supposed to be this kind of crazed rock and roll band doing another sort of Oom-Pah number.”
5. “Money” (1973)
The band’s criticism of gross materialism paid off, as this song hit No. 13 on the Billboard Hot 100. Gilmour’s playing on it also scored big, landing a spot on Guitar World’s list of The Greatest 100 Guitar Solos.
4. “Learning to Fly” (1987)
“With panoramic production, a heart-swelling guitar hook and a chorus that soars well above the clouds, ‘Learning to Fly’ became…the band’s only true MTV-era hit — with a stunning video to match,” Billboard noted of this post Waters-era track.
3. “Comfortably Numb” (1980)
“It was a negotiation and a compromise,” Waters told Absolute Radio of the back-and-forth struggle between him and Gilmour about the direction of this track’s production when they were recording it. All would likely agree now, however, that this classic track remains one of the band’s best.
2. “Another Brick in the Wall (Part II)” (1979)
“We don’t need no education. We don’t need no thought control.” This was Pink Floyd’s peak chart success, and this defiant track from their iconic The Wall project spent four weeks in the No. 1 position on the Billboard Hot 100. While school kids everywhere loved to sing along to its kid chorus, Waters assured BBC Radio 1 that “it’s not meant to be a blanket condemnation of all teachers, but the bad ones can really do people in.”
1. “Wish You Were Here” (1975)
“It was one of those happy times when the stream of consciousness works, and words come out that have meter and meaning and fit a melody,” Waters told AXS TV of how effortlessly his lyrics complemented Gilmour’s riffs and music. The album it lends its title to “was all about absence,” Waters added, “and it was to some extent about the loss of Syd Barrett, who would succumb to mental illness seven or eight years before.”
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