This is gonna piss some people off, that I put it so low. This is a lot of people’s favorite. And they’re not wrong, I just personally like the next six more.
1975’s Wish You Were comes smack in the middle of the Floyd’s powerhouse 1970s era. It’s a heartfelt, tragic, beautiful tribute to the Floyd’s fallen soldier Syd Barrett… for three out of its five tracks.
The other two, however.
The other two are my least favorite genre of pop song, the industry bullshit song. It even infests the cover of the album– a man in a suit shakes another man’s hand on the Warner Bros. backlot; the second man is wreathed in flames, he’s literally being burned. I know just a couple albums I put “Not Now John” as a highlight of The Final Cut, but honestly that’s kinda different. TFC is Roger Waters airing grievances. It’s an ugly album in general. WYWH is a beautiful album, and it’s brought down somewhat by rockstar politicking.
And yet, “Welcome to the Machine” is still mostly a pretty good song, though the lyrics are Polly Samson-level direct (“Welcome my son, welcome to the machine/What did you dream? That’s alright, we told you what to dream.”). I don’t think I can quite defend “Have a Cigar” but if someone likes it I won’t tell them they’re wrong either. The animation included in concert performances for “Welcome to the Machine” represented Pink Floyd’s first collaboration with cartoonist Gerald Scarfe, who would later contribute much to the visuals of The Wall.
As far as highlights, there’s only one right answer and it’s so right that even if I disliked the other songs on this album much more than I did, I like it enough that I still couldn’t place this album any lower. I’m speaking, of course, of the ten-part epic that, divided into two halves, opens and closes the album, “Shine On You Crazy Diamond.” If played in its entirety it is the second-longest song in the Pink Floyd catalogue, behind only the extended Endless River suite. And not a note of it is wasted. When played live, and as included on the best-of albums, they trimmed the full piece down to a slim twelve minutes, but it loses so much style that you’re better off with the whole thing. According to multiple accounts, Syd Barrett actually showed up one day during the recording of it, having gained a great deal of weight and shaved off all his hair and his eyebrows, and attempted to rejoin the band like nothing had happened in the last seven years. It was the last time all five members of Pink Floyd would be in the same place for the rest of their lives (and none of the other four ever met Barrett again), though Barrett, the first to pass away, lived another 33 years. In that time he retired from music, took up painting, and generally did not care to speak of his time in the band even with admirers.