So, from least to most, here are my top 10 favorite Pink Floyd songs of all time. These are the desert island tracks I couldn't live without.
And before anyone yells at me: no, I'm not including anything from the Syd Barrett era. I appreciate Barrett, find that part of the band's story fascinating, and do enjoy some of the music (particularly "Astronomy Domine" and "Bike"). But for you Syd hipsters out there, let me ask you this: do you really think that music holds up the way, say, Dark Side and Wish You Were Here do? Would you be at all interested in any of it if not for the drama of Barrett's collapse?
If you say "yes" to either of those questions, I name you LIAR.
10. "Dogs of War," A Momentary Lapse of Reason (1987)
This choice will annoy a lot of people, because the general consensus is that A Momentary Lapse of Reason is the first Floyd "sellout" album, coming as it did after resident angry genius Roger Waters's acrimonious departure a few years earlier. I don't necessarily disagree (although I tend to be more forgiving of David Gilmour-era Floyd than most).
But this is one of those songs that caught me at just the right time (I was nine years old) and stuck with me in a big way. That ominous martial quality of the synthesizers (I was already into real dark shit, even at that age), Gilmour's strained rocker's rasp (deployed much more effectively on "Money"), the way it explodes into something approaching gospel and then swerves into one of those epiphanic saxophone solos that inspires little kids to pick up the sax and plunk their way through "Mary Had a Little Lamb" at their first school recital (as it did for this little kid, at least)... to nine-year-old me, this was rock music happening at a register I didn't know was possible.
In fact, now that I think about it, this is the Floyd song that had the most direct impact on the trajectory of my life. If I hadn't heard this song, I probably never would have wanted to learn the saxophone. Which, in turn, means I never would have ended up in the high school marching band and met my best friends (hey, Doug, Dan, and Karl). And I likely never would have gone to college in Alamosa, CO (went there for marching band, too), never would have become a college radio DJ, never would have moved to Pueblo for the summer (1998), which means I never would have met the girl who inspired me to write Dead Billy, and so on...
Badass.
Of course, adult me can listen to "Dogs of War" and recognize that it doesn't approach anywhere near the heights the band reached at its peak. But it was my "first" favorite Floyd song, so it needs to be on this list.
9. "Careful With That Axe, Eugene" Ummagumma (1969)
Floyd from an entirely different era, when they were just beginning to be identified with that popular if meaningless term "prog rock."
It's always amused me how Pink Floyd continually gets lumped in with prog noodlers like Rush and Yes. The only similarity, as far as I can see, is their tendency toward long, abstract instrumentals (like this one). But listen to "Careful With That Axe, Eugene" after, say, Rush's "The Trees" or Yes's "Close to the Edge" and try to tell me that they're working in anywhere near the same genre.
Pink Floyd were always murkier, more cynical, much less concerned with virtuosity and psychedelia and much more concerned with exploring concepts like insanity and death. To me, they've always felt more of a piece with musicians like the Velvet Underground, Philip Glass, John Cage, and even weirdo poets like Tom Waits. They were mining the dark side long before it was cool to do so.
8. "Fearless" Meddle (1971)
Meddle is one of my least favorite Floyd albums. It's an interesting artifact, documenting their transition out of the schizophrenic music of their early years into the smooth, dark, oblong cohesiveness of the Dark Side - The Wall era (1973-1980). But as an album, it's a little bit of a lot of things but not really much of anything.
"Fearless," though — this is just a masterful song, and it showcases a side of Floyd hardly seen up to that point. It's just a great 70s rock and roll song, straightforward and to the point, infused with a deep sense of melancholy wrapped around a delicious acoustic melody. It's something that could have been penned by The Eagles, if The Eagles had anywhere near the depth of Pink Floyd. It's one of those songs that always makes my heart skip a beat.
7. "Pigs: Three Different Ones" Animals (1977)
The record that came out the year I was born. I love that Floyd's answer to punk rock was to create an album where one of the shortest songs (this one) clocks in at over eleven minutes. But their gloomy riff on Orwell's Animal Farm is just as ferocious and blistering as anything The Sex Pistols or The Clash were doing at the time.
To my ears, Animals is Floyd's bitterest album (minus the shrill and nearly unlistenable The Final Cut), and one of their most underrated. "Pigs: Three Different Ones" was Roger Waters at his most sneering — but it was sneering with a purpose. Johnny Rotten could have learned a few things from this aging "dinosaur" if he'd ever bothered to listen.
Waters had one more great album in him (The Wall) before the anger that drove his creativity began to feed on itself.
6. "Brain Damage/Eclipse" The Dark Side of the Moon (1973)
This two-song suite is, to me, the flip side of something like "Pigs: Three Different Ones." It's dark and it's got that Roger Waters snarl — but it's also oddly, nihilistically joyful. You listen to this song and you can just imagine Waters sailing off the edge of existence with a big, shit-eating grin on his face. And you can almost imagine sailing off right along with him.
5. "If" Atom Heart Mother (1970)
This is a pretty obscure track, sandwiched between the epic and orchestral (and nearly 25-minute) "Atom Heart Mother Suite" and Rick Wright's much more bombastic "Summer '68" (both strong contenders for this list).
It's also deceptively gentle for a Roger Waters song. He doesn't sneer or shout, but rather sings in a delicate and tremulous whisper, accompanied mostly by nothing but an acoustic guitar, a few spacey Gilmour flourishes, and a bit of color from Wright's piano (drummer Nick Mason tosses in a few beats towards the end).
It's the type of song you put on a yoga mix. But this is still Roger Waters, and he can't entirely keep away from the macabre. That's what turns this song from something innocuously pleasant into a bonafide work of mad Waters genius. Lyrics like "if I go insane, please don't stick your wires in my brain" float by almost without you noticing them.
4. "Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts 1-5)" Wish You Were Here (1975)
I almost wanted to leave this off the list because it's so fucking obvious. The only surprise, maybe, is that I didn't put it at number one.
But this is one of those rare 70s rock classics that is truly as great as everyone says it is. It sounds like it could have been recorded yesterday, and it's the perfect symbiosis of all Floyd's disparate parts working perfectly together in absolute, clockwork harmony. Rick Wright's synthesizer has never been more haunting, and Gilmour manages to ring more emotion out of those four famous guitar notes than Eric Clapton or Jimmy Page do in an entire solo.
And it's probably Waters' crowning lyrical achievement, an ode to a fallen friend (Syd Barrett) that manages to both honor and skewer its subject in equal measure:
Remember when you were young, you shone like the sun.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
Now there's a look in your eyes, like black holes in the sky.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
You were caught in the crossfire of childhood and stardom, blown on the steel breeze.
Come on you target for faraway laughter; come on you stranger, you legend, you martyr,
and shine!
You reached for the secret too soon, you cried for the moon.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
Threatened by shadows at night, and exposed in the light.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
Well you wore out your welcome with random precision, rode on the steel breeze.
Come on you raver, you seer of visions; come on you painter, you piper, you prisoner,
and shine!
This is just a beautiful song — maybe the most beautiful in rock-and-roll history. That's not opinion; it's verifiable fact.
3. "Nobody Home" The Wall (1979)
I know I just said that "Shine on You Crazy Diamond" is Roger Waters' standout lyrical achievement, but if that's true then The Wall's "Nobody Home" has to be a very close second. I think it's no coincidence that it's also about Syd Barrett; Waters was always at his best when he was reflecting back on his past and the fate of his former bandmate and friend.
"Dogs of War" was my first favorite Pink Floyd song. But A Momentary Lapse of Reason wasn't the first Floyd album that got its hooks into me. My brother had left a vinyl copy of The Wall in my parents' record cabinet. I don't remember how old I was the first time I listened to it, but I couldn't have been more than seven. I had been captivated by that stark black-and-white cover since as long as I can remember, and I can still recall the feelings of both utter hopelessness and transcendent joy that flooded into my young brain on that first spin.
I didn't get it at all, but something in this record spoke to me at an extremely impressionable age. And when I look at my own creative work, I see The Wall's dark influence all over it. To me this is and will always be the Pink Floyd record, the ultimate monument to all of Roger Waters' bleakest obsessions: madness, death, war, and rage. He has never been better, before or since.
2. "Hey You" The Wall (1979)
There's no Floyd song I find more haunting — and relatable — than this one. No piece of music has better captured that feeling of desperate, drowning loneliness. I don't even want to say how many hours I spent sitting alone in my bedroom in the dark, listening to this track over and over and over again. Even now, if I catch it in the right (or wrong) mood, it'll put me close to tears.
1. "The Trial" The Wall (1979)
The Wall's penultimate song and undisputed climax, "The Trial" is like the nuttiest Gilbert & Sullivan song you could imagine. It's a near perfect piece of theatre and a sublime work of black comedy, with Roger Waters playing the many roles with all the panache of a trained Broadway actor. No song in the English language gives me more joy than this.
I'm generally not a huge fan of The Wall movie (1982), but Gerald Scarfe's animation during this segment is an undisputed highlight. Watch the video above and marvel. Scarfe's depiction of the Judge as a giant, bleating asshole never fails to crack me up.
Honorable Mentions:
"One of These Days" Meddle
"Astronomy Domine" Piper at the Gates of Dawn
"Mother" The Wall
"The Great Gig in the Sky" The Dark Side of the Moon
"On the Turning Away" Momentary Lapse of Reason
"Waiting for the Worms" The Wall
"Welcome to the Machine" Wish You Were Here
"Sheep" Animals
"One of My Turns" The Wall
"Time" The Dark Side of the Moon
"Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun" A Saucerful of Secrets
"Comfortably Numb" The Wall
"In the Flesh" The Wall
"Summer '68" Atom Heart Mother
"The Nile Song" The More Soundtrack
"Free Four" Obscured by Clouds
"Bike" Piper at the Gates of Dawn
"Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict" Ummagumma
"Atom Heart Mother Suite" Atom Heart Mother
"Wish You Were Here" Wish You Were Here
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