My Favorite 52 Pink Floyd Tracks

[The Mad Plumber]

MJ has written some excellent articles, essays, and threads lately, covering subjects such as the career of Marlon Brando and his favorite songs from the Beatles' catalogue. So, being the green-eyed, egotistical monster that I am, it is time that I one-up MJ the only way I know how: character assassination.

In all seriousness, MJ has been doing great articles. I don't have the time or skill to top the ones he already has, so this article is something of a tribute to his article about his favorite Beatles songs. This time, I'm covering my favorite group of all-time: Pink Floyd.

I've spent a while going over my own collection of Floyd albums, picking and sorting tracks to make my top 52. I have to admit it's kind of hard. While I already knew before I began what my #1 song was going to be, when I got around to #52, I was really scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Also, note that I have a different philosophy about listening to Pink Floyd. I don't listen to Pink Floyd songs normally; I listen to Pink Floyd albums. Once we start getting down to #20 or #15, songs that I often listen to by themselves start to surface. Otherwise, I like to try to enjoy the Pink Floyd experience in its entirety.

Please, also note that this list is my personal favorites. Some of you are going to probably disagree with whatever makes my #1 or if certain songs don't get stronger rankings or are left completely off the list. De gustibus non est disputandum. This is an open forum and you are all welcome to have your opinions as well.

So, let's begin this thread with #52 - #41.

#52. “Goodbye Cruel World”

There’s not a whole lot to say about this track. One note I want to make is that it utilizes what I like to call a “metronome bass” tempo that you also hear in “Careful With That Axe, Eugene”. Otherwise, this is very short track that is little more than a wrap-up for The Wall’s B Side. This track might ultimately get pushed off my list should I refine it in the future, but for now it makes a descent start for this list.

#51. “The Gunner’s Dream”

Still high up on the list here, you’re not going to find many toe-tappers yet. “The Gunner’s Dream” is evidence that Roger Waters was definitely not interested in making pop music. However, this track from The Final Cut is pleasant and enjoyable, making one of the better songs from the album.

#50. “If”

I don’t want to call this song “romantic”, because I have a different image in my mind for songs that get labeled as being “romantic”. “If”, however, is still a pleasant and listenable track from Atom Heart Mother.

#49. “Bike”

Surprisingly, this is NOT the goofiest of all of Pink Floyd’s songs; there’s a truly strange track from Ummagumma which makes one of my bottom all-time Pink Floyd tracks. However, this is perhaps the funniest and most pleasant of Floyd’s goofy songs. This crazy conclusion to The Piper at the Gates of Dawn reminds me of silly contributions by the Beatles which include “Doctor Robert” and “Yellow Submarine”.

#48. “Another Brick in the Wall (Part III)”

On the radio, you’ll only hear “Another Brick in the Wall (Part II)” and you’ll never hear the other two renditions of this song. In all honesty, “Part II” is the best version of this song. All three versions of this song occur on the first record of this album; “Part I” and “Part II” are on the A Side, while “Part III” occurs on the B Side just before “Goodbye Cruel World”. “Part III” is still a good song, but it’s short and serves little more than setting up a conclusion to the B Side.

#47. “Corporal Clegg”

“Corporal Clegg” is another goofy track somewhat in the spirit of “Bike”, this time incorporating a kazoo during lyrical intermissions. Mind the volume when you’re playing this track, though, because that kazoo can be quite noisy and annoying.

#46. “San Tropez”

This track is easily one of Floyd’s most ignorable and uninspired contributions to their career. However, I still appreciate this track as an easy-going song, somewhat silly but not annoying. Still, it’s definitely not a song I would have been interested in seeing the band play live.

#45. “Not Now John”

You’ll never hear any tracks from The Final Cut on the radio, especially this one whose very first word in the lyrics is “f**k”. This song appears to be the only one from the album to feature David Gilmour’s vocals. Be sure to visit Pink Floyd’s website and watch the obscure short film based on the album. During the “Not Now John” sequence, the lyric “f**k all that” was replaced with “stuff all that”. Furthermore, what exactly is that welder doing?

#44. “Obscured by Clouds”

I’ve not seen La vallée, so I can’t comment on how these tracks work in the film. “Obscured by Clouds” is an atmospheric instrumental featuring an overdriven guitar.

#43. “Learning To Fly”

Much of my interest in the career of Pink Floyd has been concentrated on their albums in the 1970s and I avoided studying their work after The Final Cut. I heard this song on the radio and easily recognized David Gilmour’s voice and the subtle style of Floyd. Still, I feel the band had lost a lot of its edge after Roger Waters’ departure, but the remaining members still possessed the talent to produce excellent music without him.

#42. “On the Run”

I remember one day that I took my collection of Pink Floyd CDs to school to listen to on a radio in one of the classrooms. I remember one student complained about “Welcome to the Machine” being more sound effects than music. I thought that was an unfair assessment. Perhaps that student should listen to this track which IS more sound effects than music.

#41. “Your Possible Pasts”

I tried bringing in a cassette tape of The Final Cut to play during my Accounting class at high school; that didn’t go over so well. At the time, I rather considered my peers to be philistines who just couldn’t appreciate this album, but I guess that The Final Cut is a very coarse introduction to Pink Floyd, especially since there are critics who consider the album to actually be a Roger Waters solo work under the label of “Pink Floyd”. My Accounting teacher told me he didn’t like it because the songs were just so polar, going from one extremity to another. “Your Possible Pasts” is a great example of this, going from slow and somber to overdriven and dramatic.

Thanks for visiting and stay tuned to #40 - #31!

[Mighty Jack]

I am honored - And I love "Bike", it cracks me up but I also dig the arrangement, it's so skewed, child like... every little detail, every voice, instrument and sound blends beautifully and makes me smile.

My one time gal pal,a die hard Floyd fan would get soooo irritated with me that of all their serious, classic songs, my favorite PF was this goofy concoction. What can I say baby, I'm cracked.

[Captain Hygiene]

I'll look forward to you continuing this list. Pink Floyd are easily in the running for my favorite band, with a core group of five or six of my all time favorite albums (and the rest ranging between okay and terrible, like almost any music group I listen to), and I'll be curious to see how our tastes differ*. I'll have to think about putting my own list up as well, I haven't sat down and thought about ranking more than the top handful of songs.


* The Final Cut does not exist in my mind

[The Mad Plumber]

And now with a continuation of my list ...

#40. “On the Turning Away”

This is another surprisingly good song from post-Waters Floyd that I heard first on the radio. However, it is still my disappointment that music from this era resembles pop music more than Floyd music.



#39. “Another Brick in the Wall (Part I)”

Again, this is an often-ignored rendition of this song from The Wall. I like its low-key, mystic nature and its length nears that of a complete song. Again, though, it lacks many of the factors that make its successor “Another Brick in the Wall (Part II)” more popular and it really only serves as filler for the album.

#38. “Careful With That Axe, Eugene”

If the Mighty Boosh ever dares deny that they were influenced by the music of Pink Floyd, they are LYING. “Careful With That Axe, Eugene” is the very definition of psychedelic rock. It somewhat reminds me of Traffic’s “The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys”. I mentioned the “metronome bass” tempo that I liked in “Goodbye Cruel World” previously. This track is the awesome origin of that sound.



#37. “Dogs”

Lengthy tracks are no stranger to Pink Floyd. If you want short tracks, go buy a Creedence Clearwater Revival album. “Dogs” is not exactly “musical” as I would describe it and it really does help put Animals in the realm of Pink Floyd hardcore fan material. One thing I wanted to note about was that, when I used to play this album on the big stereo, my old dog would hear the dogs barking the background and start barking herself.



#36. “Burning Bridges”

This is an interesting song from the appropriately-titled Obscured by Clouds. This album has a lot of songs that are very mediocre and it almost seems like the band was commissioned to make pop songs or a soundtrack to rival that of Easy Rider. “Burning Bridges” isn’t quite like a pop song and is actually one of the best works to come out of this forgettable album.

#35. “See-Saw”

This song is something of a marriage between silliness, sweetness, and sentimentality. I would almost say that the tempo and swing on the song somewhat resembles the act of playing on a see-saw.

#34. “Goodbye Blue Sky”

There are quite a couple of dark, somber tracks on The Wall. During the “Goodbye Blue Sky” sequence in the Alan Parker film Pink Floyd The Wall, the audience is treated by an excellent Gerald Scarfe animation sequence featuring an apocalyptic war-torn battlefield. In the sequence, a fascist condor tears up the landscape leaving pools of blood, disgusting blobs transform into war machines, and deformed refugees hide from the rain of bombs.



#33. “Atom Heart Mother”

From what I read, the members of Pink Floyd hate hate HATE this album with a passion. Well, I can understand a little of why, especially considering tracks like “Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast”. Atom Heart Mother strayed quite far from Pink Floyd’s origins and is quite a detour from the direction that the band would ultimately take with their more popular albums. In fact, when I was much younger and long before I ultimately got this album, I would see it at the record store, view the graphic of the farm cow on the front, and think to myself, “Wow, there’s got to be some real hardcore tracks on this thing that are just too extreme for radio.” Wow, was I wrong.

Despite Pink Floyd’s own feelings about this album, this title track, however, has quite an enjoyable value to it. In fact, it might be the longest of all of Floyd’s tracks, clocking in more than 23 minutes in length. I look at “Atom Heart Mother” as being the great predecessor to other epic Floyd tracks such as “Echoes”, “Shine On You Crazy Diamond”, and even “Dogs” to a degree.



#32. “Nobody Home”

This is another of the less-appreciated tracks from The Wall that you will never hear on the radio, probably because of the lyric “fifteen channels of s**t on the TV”. This track features some beautiful piano work.

#31. “One of the Few” / “The Hero’s Return”

This is another one of those “polar” tracks from The Final Cut that can really turn off moderates. I have to say, however, that I really just like the tune and attitude of “The Hero’s Return” that it makes it such an entertaining and exciting song.

#30 - #21 next time, folks! Thanks for visiting!

[Captain Hygiene]

A few of my thoughts: "Learning to Fly" and "On the Turning Away" are the only two tracks I can listen to from the Momentary Lapse album. Similar to what you mention here, even when the songwriting is good, I just can't stand the production. It's just so bland and soul-less (and not in an intentional "Welcome to the Machine" way). Fortunately the group redeemed themselves with their final album, which is a big step closer to classic Pink Floyd.

I'm glad to see you put in the "Atom Heart Mother" suite. It definitely has a rough, thrown-together feel, and not everything works out (the chanting choir, for example). On the other hand, it's in some ways more epic and experimental than any of their famous works, and I can listen to it over and over.

I love the Animals album, although it took ages for me to get into. I think of "Dogs" as a bit more musical than you, I guess - I've always thought of it as a great showpiece for Gilmour's guitar work, with everything from biting solos to slower, moody segments. I like the guitar work here better than on the much more famous "Time" or "Comfortably Numb".

[The Mad Plumber]

Thanks for the comments, everyone! MJ, I have to say, making "Bike" your favorite Floyd, you are a strange bugger; de gustibus non est disputandum. Hygiene, I do find that a lot of your insights resonate with my own, though I'm not as dismissive of The Final Cut, but I understand where you're coming from. I wonder if the Pink Floyd camp is split between between Waters and Gilmour, because there's a part of me that feels that I would align myself with Waters, but there's also the part of me that feels that he may have been a great source of the disharmony in the group in the first place. There's no true way of know and it's none of my business, anyway.

Anyway, on with the list ...

#30. “Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts I - IX)”

On Wish You Were Here, “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” is featured as the opening and closing tracks; “Parts I - V” were placed on beginning while “Parts VI - IX” were placed on the end. What exactly are these “parts”, anyway? On Ummagumma and Atom Heart Mother, you have songs that are supposedly continuous songs, but they’re said to be broken up into “parts”. On my CD version of Ummagumma, these supposed parts do exist as separate CD tracks. However, what are these so-called “parts” of “Shine On You Crazy Diamond”?

A long time ago, I believe I read in a biography that a strange, overweight man with a shaved head and eyebrows visited the studio during the recording of this song. The members of the band were shocked to realize that the man was in fact the reclusive ex-member Syd Barrett, whom this song was dedicated to.

#29. “Sheep”

“Sheep” begins with an electric organ supervising the baying of oblivious sheep. Gradually, the tune descends into darker territory before brutally marching over the naïve tranquility.



#28. “One of These Days”

The opening to Meddle features only one spoken lyric by Nick Mason: “One of these days, I’m going to cut you into little pieces!” The audio effects of this track are incredible and very effective.



#27. “The Thin Ice”

This is another unappreciated track from The Wall that early on establishes much of the style that the remainder of the album will largely abide to. The Wall is a peculiar album to think about it. I tend to look at it as being Floyd’s final evolution of their progressive hard rock style. Songs in The Wall are moody, where they present pleasantness in a mocking or cynical sort of manner, then the songs expose their dark side. The songs almost seem to be a window into the mind of a psychotic person, yet at the same time are still fun and somewhat comical. For people my age, The Wall was a hell of a way to be introduced to the sound of Pink Floyd, because while albums like Wish You Were Here and Animals somewhat resemble a progression to The Wall’s sound, it really doesn’t exist anywhere else in the band’s career.



#26. “The Fletcher Memorial Home”

This song can produce very dark images in my mind when hearing it, but those images had been squelched after having seen the short film for The Final Cut. In the “Fletcher” sequence, the protagonist drives to a mental hospital which houses the likes of history’s greatest warmongers, from Adolf Hitler to Napoleon Bonaparte. Outside, two characters are arguing over a Croquet ball; I recognize the one character as being Margaret Thatcher, but I don’t know who the other character is supposed to be. The protagonist arrives and, upset over the death of his son, shoots both of the bickering figures.



#25. “Brain Damage” / “Eclipse”

These two tracks serve as the somewhat-goofy, cynical conclusion to Pink Floyd’s opus The Dark Side of the Moon. From my memory, radio stations tend to always play both these tracks together. If you listen close enough to the audio after “Eclipse”, you can here someone saying, “There is no dark side of the moon, really; matter of fact, it’s all dark.”



#24. “Mother”

A couple of years ago, I went to a Roger Waters concert at The Palace of Auburn Hills. The concert included several popular Floyd songs, some Waters songs that I had never heard, The Dark Side of the Moon, and then an encore performance of more Floyd songs. During the performance of “Mother”, people cheered when Waters sung, “Mother, should I run for president?” Then, after the lyric, “Mother, should I trust the government?”, even I was yelling “no” with the crowd. That was a very fun time.



#23. “The Narrow Way”

Ummagumma is a strange, strange album to put it mildly. I would venture to say that barely anything on it resembles music. I remember when I first got it, I went into an empty room, plugged a Walkman into the wall, and tried to listen to it. I believe my thoughts at the time were, “Where’s the music?” David Gilmour’s “The Narrow Way” is the closest thing resembling a song in the entire studio part of the album. The song’s three parts include a carefree instrumental, a dark and sinister upheaval, and finally an atmosphere somewhere between the two extremes with Gilmour providing vocals.

#22. “What Shall We Do Now?”

What? You’ve not heard of this song? Well, if you take your vinyl record album of The Wall and look at the lyrics written on the protective sheets, you’ll notice a set of lyrics for a song called “What Shall We Do Now?”, yet you never hear the song played on the actual album. “What Shall We Do Now?” was excised in favor for “Empty Spaces” and “Young Lust”, which ultimately, in my opinion, was a mistake. “What Shall We Do Now?” resembles an extended version of “Empty Spaces”, and the closest thing to a studio version of this song is when it is used during the Alan Parker film Pink Floyd The Wall. It’s never been released on CD.

Speaking of the film, the Gerald Scarfe sequence during “What Shall We Do Now?” has got to be the best of all of the animation sequences in the entire film. It begins with two flowers, each respectively resembling male and female genitalia, examining one another before embracing, turning against one another, and finally ending with the female flower slaying the male flower. A wall begins to form, constructed with material objects such as cars and stereos. The wall grows uncontrollably, turning flowers into barbed wire, babies into skinheads, and churches into casinos. The best part features an extended transformation sequence where Pink transforms from a rabid creature into a voluptuous woman, ice cream, an automatic weapon, a hypodermic, a guitar, a BMW, and finally a hammer.



#21. “A Pillow of Winds”

This is a pleasant and enjoyable track from Meddle that is somewhat in the spirit of “If”, “See-Saw”, and maybe even some of the mediocre tracks from Obscured by Clouds as well.

Coming up next time, #20 - #16. Thanks for visiting, folks!

[The Mad Plumber]

52 songs was a hell of a number of songs to pick, especially for this band. We're down to #20 now, so now we're getting into the real meat of the tracks that made Pink Floyd so great. So, let's continue ...

#20. “Waiting For the Worms” / “Stop”

The Alan Parker film better illustrates how this album is supposed to act as sort of a story or at least have a central theme. “Waiting For the Worms” occurs on the D Side of The Wall, where Pink is under the drug-induced hallucination that he is the leader of a neo-Nazi group. Perhaps the most famous of Gerald Scarfe’s animations is associated with this track: the marching hammers. I really like the ending sequence of this track and would have liked to have seen this song performed live.

#19. “Astronomy Domine”

Here is Pink Floyd’s introduction to the world. This opening track for The Piper at the Gates of Dawn introduces the many elements that would become staples of Floyd’s style, including the incredible audio effects, sound editing, and the integration of sound effects. In this case, the audio of their manager emulating an astronaut was mixed into the audio. “Astronomy Domine” is evidence of founding member Syd Barrett’s lasting influence on the sound of Pink Floyd.



#18. “Fearless”

“Fearless” almost sounds like the ilk of the poor pop songs Pink Floyd attempted in Obscured by Clouds. However, in this particular instance, it works. Listening to it, I can hear early influences of what would be “Wish You Were Here”. Meddle’s “Fearless” is fun and somewhat clownish track that is the highlight of the album’s A Side.

#17. “The Great Gig in the Sky”

It appears to be a staple of Pink Floyd’s career to have guest musicians and singers brought in for their compositions. In the case of “The Great Gig in the Sky”, it was Clare Torry who provided the lyric-less vocals. When I saw Roger Waters at the Palace, the singer who brought in to sing Torry’s role was spot-on in her performance. It was an awesome thing to see.



#16. “Wish You Were Here”

Here we have the title track to the group’s 1975 album Wish You Were Here. There's something contemporary about this track, utilizing a classic guitar sound and played very simplistically ... yet almost in a mocking way. It stands in stark contrast to other Floyd tracks that incorporate various sound effects and editing to produce an unworldly sound.



#15 - #11 next time, folks. Thanks for visiting!

[The Mad Plumber]

#15. “Is There Anybody Out There?”

I tend to believe that this song is heavily ignorable amongst moderates and even to a degree by Floyd fans themselves. It is short, had only one lyric that was repeated a few times, and never achieves radio broadcast, but I very much like this track for its atmosphere and simplicity. During the time that I used to play around with the piano, I tried teaching myself this song; my piano playing never got far and I never really even mastered this tune.



#14. “See Emily Play”

I don’t have much to say about this track. It’s just a fun, upbeat composition by Barrett that borders on the edge of being pop, but still retains that early Floyd style.

#13. “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun”

Amongst Floyd fans, Roger Waters is looked upon as being an incredible lyricist. However, for “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun”, Waters loses points on originality for borrowing from Chinese poetry.



#12. “Speak To Me” / “Breathe”

“Speak To Me” is really low on the volume and damn near impossible to hear, but if you can hear it, you can hear various sound effects alluding to tracks that await on Dark Side of the Moon. “Breathe” would also be reprised at the end of “Time”.



#11. “Run Like Hell”

I like the guitar tempo that makes up the background of this track. It reminds me somewhat of other songs such as Stevie Nicks’ “Edge of Seventeen” and even Heart’s “Barracuda” to a degree.

I don’t have any live Floyd albums in my collection as of yet, with exception to the live portion of Ummagumma. I remember biking to the local bowling alley and hearing a live version of “Run Like Hell” being played on the outdoor speakers. I recall often hearing Roger Waters’ cawing noise quite often during that version.



Ten tracks left, folks! I'll be covering the upper half of my top ten next time. Thanks for visiting!

[Captain Hygiene]

I'm still enjoying this list a lot, and I finally got down to ordering my favorite PF songs. As it turns out, 40 45 songs is a pretty good dividing line for me in terms of thinking the songs stand out rather than just being pretty good.

45. Learning to Fly
I think this is solid musically, but as I alluded to above, I think the production absolutely kills it. It would have been a much better song without the completely soulless, generic industrial production.

44. Absolutely Curtains
This track is almost an epic conclusion to the Obscured by Clouds soundtrack. It starts off sounding like a more simplified test run for some ideas in “Shine On, You Crazy Diamond” (which is where the track really works), but then remembers that it’s really a film score and crams in some native chanting towards the end. It’s odd how much that reminds me of the sports crowd in “Fearless,” but it really doesn’t work here. It starts off interestingly, but then just goes on, and on, and on.

43. Any Colour You Like
It’s a decent instrumental on the Dark Side album, but it really took me seeing a concert video to appreciate it, and it’s one of the few songs that I think works better as a live jam than a meticulously-recorded album track. The PULSE video in particular is great, and it really shows just how much the track is musically related to the “Breathe” and “Great Gig in the Sky” themes, again moreso than the album version.

42. If
Funny thing about this album, I actually disliked the three “traditional” songs for quite a while. While I still can’t stand the experimental “Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast,” I now enjoy everything else on the album. This song is essentially an early, folksy version of “Brain Damage,” with Waters exploring some vaguely dark lyrical themes in pleasant music. I take the message to heart and implore everyone, everywhere to please not put their wires in my brain.

41./40. The Nile Song / Ibiza Bar
These two are pretty much tied – they’re based on the same musical ideas. The Nile Song is the heavier, lyrical version, which is pretty cool as it’s one of the few hard rock songs the group did. Ibiza Bar features some similar ideas but is a bit more subdued musically. Overall, both are good but not great – they’re pretty rough and simplistic.

39. On the Turning Away
One of the two songs I listen to from Momentary Lapse, as I mentioned above. I normally dislike the generically “big”, arena rock sound of the album, but I think it works well here. The song is a plea for humanity, without coming off as (too) cheesy, and I like the feel of the melody – it Gaelic (or something, I’m no world music expert!).

38. Childhood's End
A nice rocker from the underrated Obscured by Clouds. It’s not a great number, but it’s most interesting to see how almost everything in this song is an early prototype for Time. Like much of this album, the song is pretty straightforward and simplistic. Compared to Dark Side of the Moon, it really shows what extra thought and production give to music.

37. The Gold it's in The...
Another straightforward, fairly simple rock number from Obscured by Clouds. I like it, it sounds more like something from the Beatles more than Pink Floyd.

36. Summer '68
A good Richard Wright number from Atom Heart Mother. I like the use of the studio brass on this song, it’s quite a bit different in style from most of the group’s other numbers.

35. The Thin Ice
This is a solid song, the only reason it didn’t rank higher on the list is that it’s relatively short. While I like the main tune, it’s really the guitar work near the end that I love. Similar to a lot of The Wall, Roger Waters may have been dominating the band, but it’s often David Gilmour’s work that carries the songs.

34. Marooned
I like this instrumental quite a bit. The only issue I have with it is that it’s more of a mood piece than anything else – it’s very evocative, but it never really accomplishes anything more than that.

33. Fat Old Sun
Nothing too fancy here, just a straightforward, relaxed number by David Gilmour. It’s (once again) pretty unpolished, but the musical ideas are solid.

32. Outside the Wall
This is almost a throwaway little number to close off The Wall. However, it’s really on the list because, as much as I like the song on the album, the orchestral instrumental used in the movie version turns it into what sounds like a moving hymn.

31. The Show Must Go On
This song seems to exist mainly as a stylistic parody of Queen (or possibly the Beach Boys), but I think it turns out to be a solid little number with some great vocal harmonies.

[The Mad Plumber]

Thanks, Cap! I'm definitely interested in seeing the progression of your list; I'd very much like to see how it compares and contrasts with my own. As for myself, I've been too busy with my drawings to sit down and document my thoughts on the last few tracks to make a thought-out post. Having finished my latest drawing, I can get back to wrapping up my list.

#10. “Money”

“There is nothing quite as wonderful as money. There is nothing quite as beautiful as cash.” Well, that’s actually another song about money, but still just as comical.

Dark Side of the Moon might have been around the second or third Pink Floyd CD album that I would acquire, purchased at a record store in Florida. Like my Wish You Were Here CD album, it was a gold-plated edition and it provided me many surprises as to how many of the random songs I would actually hear on the radio would turn out to be Floyd tracks. This track was the most surprising of all.

It’s difficult to describe, but when I was younger, I felt there were certain songs that seemed to resonate with me being a native of Toledo; these included Bob Seger’s “Katmandu”, the Doors’ “Riders of the Storm”, the Beatles’ “Come Together”, and this track. “Money” seems to emulate an American blues tune … almost in the form of a parody.

#9. “Have a Cigar”

Another curious thing about Pink Floyd is how they could get away with releasing albums that featured only five to six tracks. With most groups, an album would consist of somewhere to ten to twelve tracks. It draws up the debate of quantity versus quality.

“Have a Cigar” is distinct for the employment of its guest singer, Roy Harper, who was brought in when Gilmour’s own vocals were being exhausted.

#8. “Pigs (Three Different Ones)”

By the time that I had acquired Animals, I had already succeeded in acquiring CDs covering Pink Floyd songs I had already heard on the radio and any vinyl albums our family had. Thus, Animals featured a collection of songs that I had never heard before in the entirety of my life.

“Pigs” is by far the best track from the album, and its sound did amaze me as I never heard it before. A note to make about this track is that it very effectively uses a talk box to create a squealing pig sound of sorts; you’ll later hear Gilmour employ the talk box in The Division Bell for “Keep Talking”.

I should also note that the lyric "Hey you, Whitehouse" is a reference to Mary Whitehouse, not the Executive Office of the United States.

#7. “Time”

Like “Money”, this was another song frequently heard on the radio that ultimately surprised me as being a Floyd track.

When I was a youth, I had the old stereo system set up in my room. The stereo system was plugged into a timer unit and I had “Time” recorded from my CD onto a cassette tape. When the timer kicked on in the morning, the cassette tape would play and I would be woken up by the loud sounds of the track's collage of chiming bells. This became so routine that I would even manage to be woken up merely by the ethereal sound that preceded the chiming bells.



#6. “The Happiest Days of Our Lives” / “Another Brick in the Wall (Part II)”

Oh, we’ve ALL heard this one.

Here’s my story about this song. Back during my junior high years, I was volunteering in the library during my homeroom hour. I’d sit behind the counter and think about songs that remember hearing my parents play on the radio during my childhood, but I just couldn’t remember enough details about them and it somewhat drove me crazy. One of the songs I was tying to remember had an adult singing a haunting song before a group of children joined in on the song.

So, while I was visiting my mother in Florida, she puts a cassette tape in the stereo while we’re waiting for my sister to get ready. The stereo starts playing “Another Brick in the Wall (Part I)”, and for whatever reason, something clicked and I yelled out, “THAT’S THE SONG!!” Sure enough, “Part I” was followed by these two tracks, solving the mystery of the song that had been haunting my memories and starting my interest in the genre of classic rock.

For some reason, my mother thought that The Wall and this song in particular was about Vietnam. Maybe her reasoning made a little sense at the time, but rest assured: the song’s not about Vietnam.



Five tracks left, folks! My top five next time. Thanks for visiting!

[Captain Hygiene]

I realized there were a couple tracks that I'd written down but forgot to include in my list. So, I've bumped everything down a couple places and added a few more tracks at the end, and now it's a Top 45 list.

[Captain Hygiene]

30. Money
This is easily my least favorite of the vocal tunes on Dark Side of the Moon, although (since it’s apparently on this list) I still like it. The lyrics are pretty fun, but also seem a little bit more cliché than the other tracks on the album, and while the bulk of the tune is in 7/4 time, the music is hardly more than a three chord blues variant. Still, what completely makes this song is the switchover from 7/4 to 4/4 time for the guitar interlude. It may be straightforward, but it absolutely rocks.

29. Goodbye Blue Sky
One of the David Gilmour-penned tracks from The Wall, I like the way the calm acoustic guitar contrasts with the more disturbing synth lines and lyrics. The vocal harmonies really hearken back to the earlier, classic Pink Floyd.

28. Mother
Roger Waters sounds a bit whiny on this track, and some of the lyrics feel a bit absurd, but the music is good enough to overcome that. I like the way the track starts off just as just a simple acoustic guitar but develops into a full-blown number, and once again the piece is anchored by Gilmour’s strong electric guitar work.

27. Wot's...uh, the Deal?
My favorite of the earlier, very folk-influenced songs the group did. It has a wistful feeling very unlike most of the more famous works by the group and is my favorite vocal song from Obscured by Clouds.

26. What Do You Want From Me?
The production is a little bit too generically funky for my tastes at the beginning, but the song is generally quite listenable. The song really comes into its own when the bridge (or whatever it is, the song’s structure isn’t quite typical) appears near the end (“You can have anything you want…”). This part just blows my mind, with incredible harmony and backup, and building synthesizer layers. Best moment the group has had since the 1970s.

25. Hey You
One of the longer and better songs from The Wall, I think it works partly because of the stance the lyrics take on division and loneliness. I also like the way the main recurring musical theme from the album is used as a contrast to this song’s melody, rather than serving as the main theme in the “Another Brick in the Wall” pieces.

24. One of My Turns
The most fun song on The Wall, the lyrics and delivery show a dark, biting humor much more prevalently than most of the other tracks. The song and guitar work are catchy as anything, and it doesn’t get better than Roger Waters shouting about his favorite axe.

23. High Hopes
A classic way for the group to go out, and much better than any nearly 30-year-old group has the right to be. The subtle use of sound effects at the beginning and end is a good way to evoke past albums, and this song (similar to “A Great Day for Freedom”) has an instrumental build/guitar solo fadeout. It’s really a tossup as to which of the two I like better, but this one is the more fitting end to the album.

22. A Great Day for Freedom
One of the great moments of the Division Bell album. I like the way the lyrics’ most explicit reference is to the Berlin Wall, but they can also be heard as a reference to the band’s history with The Wall album and split with Roger Waters. I love the end to this song, as the instrumental builds and builds behind a guitar solo.

21. Nobody Home
This is one of the better tracks from The Wall, in my opinion – along with “Vera,” it’s one of the two that really stand apart from the rest. The musical structure is fairly simple, piano based but with good use of some orchestral instruments, but it’s really the feeling of emptiness that seals it. It just feels so much more genuine than much of the album (never mind why the singer is alone).


From about here on out, the order is pretty loose - I like the songs so much, many are almost interchangeable in ranking.

[The Mad Plumber]

And now, my top five ...

#5. “Echoes”

There is a feeling that I have that Meddle would have fallen into irrelevance and obscurity, even amongst Floyd fans, were it not for this track which takes up the entirety of the album’s B Side. “Echoes” is not the longest of the groups tracks, as I noted earlier that I believe “Atom Heart Mother” clocks in at least one or two minutes longer. However, “Echoes” tops “Atom Heart Mother” in many ways and achieves the status of being the band’s greatest of epic tracks.

Epic songs like this must be a very daring investment. I don’t believe radio stations ever play “Echoes”, which is damn shame. Hell, they seem to feel the need to shave seconds off of songs like Billy Joel’s “My Life”, Steely Dan’s “Do It Again”, and the B-52s’ “Love Shack” which aren’t particularly long songs to begin with, and yet they’ll play Peter Frampton’s “Do You Feel Like We Do” in its entirety.

“Echoes” takes elements from “Atom Heart Mother” as well as Ummagumma compositions such as “The Narrow Way”, “Sysyphus”, and maybe even “The Grand Vizier’s Garden Party”, and irons out the flaws that held these tracks down, creating the most epic of Pink Floyd’s tracks.



#4. “Hey You”

If you’ve gotten this far into The Wall without killing yourself, then congratulations because things are about to start looking up … right after this song. Yes, after a string of dark and depressing tracks from this album’s B Side, you are now greeted to yet another dark and moody song that serves as the opening to The Wall’s C Side.

I believe I read somewhere that it was originally intended that “Hey You” would follow “Comfortably Numb”, making it the final track on the C Side and thus making “Is There Anybody Out There?” the opening track for the C Side. Ultimately, “Hey You” is the opening track for the C Side, and it is my opinion that The Wall’s C Side is the strongest side of the album.

“Hey You” has a very gothic and macabre nature about it, with lyrics like “worms ate into his brain” and the sound effect of flies as if buzzing about a corpse. This track was lacking from the theatrical release of the Alan Parker film Pink Floyd The Wall; if you have a DVD release of the film, you can find the deleted “Hey You” sequence in the special features.

This is also another song that I’ve attempted to master on piano. There was a certain point in my practice that I could do the first third of the song fairly, though it never really sounded as good as it did on the album and I also used two hands when I suppose I should actually only be using one.



#3. “Us and Them” / “Any Colour You Like”

Several years ago, back when I was working at Target, my father gave me a pair of tickets he got from a relative to go see a Pink Floyd light show. The first half was the entirety of Dark Side of the Moon featuring a laser projection display which could create various vector images. The second half was miscellaneous Floyd tracks that required the use of 3D glasses which don’t work well for me because of the damage to my left eye. I wish I could talk about the sequence during “Us and Them”, but all I remember was simplistic drawings of tanks rolling around.

“Us and Them” is a beautiful and elegant track, with beautiful piano work that Richard Wright should be proud of.



#2. “Comfortably Numb”

Classic rock is a peculiar genre, one that’s difficult to fit into any particular mold. What causes a song to fall into its classification, especially when the song employs instruments not typically associated with rock music, such as violins? Take the Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby” for instance, which features an elegant string section and no percussion. “Comfortably Numb” also employs strings during its refrains, though I suppose that the song is more memorable for its awesome guitar work at the end.

I noted “The Thin Ice” as a great example of the polar personalities of tracks from The Wall. With “Comfortably Numb”, we’ve got a mixture of sinister, symphonic, psychotic, and hard rock elements all mixed perfectly into one track.



#1. “Welcome to the Machine”

Now, here’s where I expect to catch some flak from other critics. “Why isn’t ‘Echoes’ your number one favorite? Why isn’t ‘Comfortably Numb’? Why isn’t ‘Wish You Were Here’? Why? Why? Why?” Well, they’re not. This is my personal favorite.

Here’s my story behind this song. Before I heard this song, I believe I had already invested my interest into the genre of classic rock. I was in the living room listening to the local radio station on the stereo. When I heard this song, I was blown away. I was so amazed by what I heard that I immediately went searching through our collection of vinyl records to see if we had it. Much to my chagrin, our vinyl collection contained only three Floyd albums, and none of them had this song. Wish You Were Here was probably the first Floyd CD I would purchase. While “Another Brick in the Wall (Part II)” launched my interest in classic rock, “Welcome to the Machine” was what ultimately made me fall in love with the sound of Pink Floyd.

“Welcome to the Machine” has such an unworldly, ethereal atmosphere to it. It has such a hi-tech sound to it that it truly brings up the image of cold machinery in my mind. I was also pleasantly surprised to find this Gerald Scarfe animation for the song, which is by far his greatest and most surreal.



I'd like to thank everyone for visiting and reading my list. For an extra bonus, I'll be posting my five least favorite Floyd tracks next time. Also, be sure to stay tuned in for Captain Hygiene's list as well. Thanks for visiting!

[Bix Dugan]

Great list.
My first concert (I think I was 15) was Pink Floyd's Animal's Tour. I saw them at the Cleveland Stadium, where the Browns played.
Standing down on the field, right before they started playing, I remember the hundreds of frisbees flying around. Not too much else, though. Hehe.

[Captain Hygiene]

Bix, I'm really jealous. That would have been my tour of choice to see.

TMP, I've really enjoyed your list (and you have the funniest Christmas avatar/username switch I've seen so far this year). I like the fact that you didn't put one of the big epics at the top of your list - it's great to see someone go against the grain like that (hint: I don't).

As I mentioned earlier, the top 20 are really where ranking the songs gets difficult for me - they're pretty much all great. Without further ado, here's the next ten on my list:

20. Vera
If all of The Wall were on this level of music and (particularly) lyricism, I wouldn’t complain that the album’s story was trite and annoying. It’s a moving question about how things “used to be,” rather than the more banal whininess of much of Pink’s story in the album

19. Comfortably Numb
In many ways, I think this song’s overwhelming popularity works against it. I like it musically (particularly the second theme, where David Gilmour sings), and the lyrics range from okay (the Roger Waters section) to evocative (again, the Gilmour section). The guitar solos are very good, although I can think of quite a few other Gilmour solos off the top of my head that I like better. To summarize, I like this song but don’t feel it quite deserves its reputation.

18. Welcome to the Machine
One of the first Pink Floyd songs I recognized on the radio, I never paid much attention to the lyrics so I figured “the machine” was some bizarre, literal machine. My vague impression was that it was a pretty creepy song. Listening to it after I started paying attention to the group, though, it’s obviously a commentary labeling the music business as a machine. The creepy sound effects? Elevator doors used during a visit to the record company’s representative (apparently continued in the next song). Pretty simple musically, but it fits in very well with the album as a whole.

17. Have a Cigar
A great continuation of the previous song and the album’s theme. I love the snide lyrics here, they’re bitingly funny. The fact that the vocalist is a guest, rather than one of the group, only adds to the theme of soulless profiteering in the music industry. The song also shows a clear musical link to the Animals album, which otherwise often sounds pretty unrelated to the group’s earlier output.

16. Pigs on the Wing I/II
A great little pair of songs that are entirely based on acoustic guitar (in their original form, anyway). The two are almost identical musically, with just a couple subtle chord changes, but the lyrics represent opposite views to bookend the Animals album and provide a reference to the iconic “pig” from the album. The best rendition of these is actually from the 8 Track version of the album, in which the songs were linked together with some great electric guitar work that would make David Gilmour proud:


15. Mudmen
My favorite song on the (again, underrated) Obscured by Clouds album. This is an instrumental of the “Burning Bridges” theme, but I like this version a lot better than the vocal one. Some great Gilmour guitar work that reaches high enough to have been referred to as “musical dentistry” by its detractors.

14. Atom Heart Mother
I briefly mentioned this one earlier. It’s the most experimental of the really lengthy tracks the group made, and while it doesn’t entirely work, it’s still fascinating to listen to, and to compare to the group’s later epic pieces.

13. The Great Gig in the Sky
This song seems to exist on a different level than the rest of the album. As incredible as the vocal section is (which kind of links the album together musically, since it’s based primarily on a similar two-chord structure used in several other songs), I love the piano intro and its reprise later in the song.

12. Sheep
“Sheep” and “Pigs” are pretty much interchangeable in position for me, I really like them equally. The bulk of this song is faster and more driving than anything else on the album, and it has a slower break with fantastic moodiness in the middle. I also love the Gilmour guitar outro.

11. Pigs (Three Different Ones)
I love this song, you can practically feel the bile spewing from Roger Waters as he sings it. Despite the fact that it’s the simplest of the three big songs on Animals (and was written to fill out the album after the extended development of the other two), it absolutely rocks. The most interesting thing to me is how the instrumental break in the middle builds for so long, when it’s primarily just switching back and forth between two chords. The instrumental just keeps building and building to an incredible climax that still sounds bleaker than anything else the group ever did.