![]() Or how despite being among the most legendary sing-alongs in rock history - epochal enough that even a mook like Fred Durst knows all the words - the song's chorus only appears once in the entire song. Or how the bleating synths come in to fortify the melodic refrain in between the first verse and chorus. Consider the radio crackle the opening riff emerges from - a thematic holdover from the preceding 'Have a Cigar' outro - and the way the song's acoustic solo lands on top of it with such comparative clarity, with every finger-on-strings slip audible, that it's heart-piercing from the first note. Unlike 'Us and Them,' it's impossible to imagine any other band even attempting a song like 'Run Like Hell,' but that just makes you grateful to have had such extended access to Floyd's singular dementia.įeels kinda wrong, doesn't it? To have a relatively straightforward ballad as the crowning achievement of one of history's greatest progressive rock bands - it's sorta like putting 'Patience' at the top of a Guns N' Roses list, no? Fair, but you have to consider that being Pink Floyd means even an accessible lighter-waver like 'Wish You Were Here' has untold layers of subtle production and structural depth to it. It might be the most anthemic chest-beater Floyd ever devised, but it's also one of the group's most unsettling, with dramatic tonal shifts before the explicitly fascistic Waters-as-Pink verses, and some of the singer's most stomach-churning, guttural wails ('If they catch you in the backseat trying to pick her locks/ They're gonna send you back to mother in a cardboard box!'). Like 'Young Lust' and 'Another Brick,' it's at least based in the steady thump of disco, but unlike those songs, it's still mostly led by its guitars, the galloping, chiming six-strings of Gilmour. ![]() Not like it's surprising that nobody ever thought to combine the strengths of Chic and Rush before Pink Floyd, but the fact that Floyd did, and came up with The Wall's side-four highlight in the process, is forever one for the top of the band's resume. 1 rock fans didn't even bother to cry 'sell out!' over. ![]() And yes, The Wall was a monstrous double-LP statement of egomania from which there was no returning, but the set's rock operatics couldn't obscure the most seamless integration of disco's thump that any major rock band had yet achieved - resulting in a Hot 100 No. Yes, the '77 punk movement largely followed in response to the overblown pomposity of their ilk, but play Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols and Animals back to back and see which one sounds more like a bilious screed from a bunch of pissed-off Britons who don't give a f-k what their fans want to hear. Yes, Wish You Were Here is overwhelmed by a combined 26 minutes and nine movements of jazzy art-funking (and no shortage of fretting about The Machine), but it's also centered around the profound humanity of one of the great tear-jerking ballads in rock history. Yes, they set the standard for college-dorm stoner rock with the prismatic prog of The Dark Side of the Moon, but in between the LP's space-rock zone-outs are a pulse-racing proto-EDM instrumental, a heart-stopping soul vocal exorcism and a couple ripping sax solos. ![]()
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