Some bright-eyed and crazy, some frightened and lost.
A love letter to arguably the 12 greatest Pink Floyd lyrics.
The subtitle of this post is disingenuous. The act of writing has made me realise that I admire Pink Floyd more than I love them. This is a letter in which I pay my respects rather than a billet-doux.
On reflection I doubt that any Pink Floyd composition would make it into my Desert Island Disc selection. That is, if not a revelation, at least a noteworthy surprise. A surprise that, as they say in Comfortably Numb, “I can’t explain, you would not understand.”
I use the word composition advisedly. Pink Floyd’s best songs are sophisticated constructions, both beautifully written and impeccably produced.
So Desert Island Lyrics would be another matter entirely. If there were Oscars for lyric writing Pink Floyd might just clean up. Their lyrics read like poetry. This is not so much a listicle as an anthology.
Here are the top 12 Pink Floyd lyrics, according to me, in reverse order. The header for each entry clicks through to the relevant song at the relevant point.
12. Time (Dark Side Of The Moon)
Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
Fritter and waste the hours in an off-hand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way
The first of three lyrics from the same song. Although (spoiler alert) none of these take the top spot, Time would have to be my choice for best Pink Floyd song based on lyrics alone, due to its super-saturation of evocative language. Painting with words, with not a single one wasted.
11. Your Possible Pasts (The Final Cut)
They flutter behind you your possible pasts
Some bright-eyed and crazy some frightened and lost
A warning to anyone still in command
Of their possible future to take care
In derelict sidings the poppies entwine
With cattle trucks lying in wait for the next time
It is a brave band that follows one of the most famous concept albums of all time (The Wall) with another one. Maybe you don’t worry too much about second concept album syndrome if you also wrote the likes of Wish You Were Here and Dark Side Of The Moon. The Final Cut is an album of rage and resignation, of fierce frustration and desperate sadness. It runs head first at the issues of war, politics and grief. Your Possible Pasts is a smouldering and beautifully measured morality tale.
10. Sheep (Animals)
Bleating and babbling we fell on his neck with a scream
Wave upon wave of demented avengers
March cheerfully out of obscurity into the dream.
Sheep is a somewhat trippy tale of ovine insurgency. It is a story about how even the meekest of creatures have their limits when it comes to savage oppression.
In Animal Farm the pigs rise up against the men. Here the sheep rise up against the dogs. From passive flock (“Meek and obedient you follow the leader down well-trodden corridors into the valley of steel.”) to waves of demented avengers.
It’s a bit silly in the cold light of day but the writing is artful, partially alliterative and perfectly metered.
9. The Happiest Days Of Our Lives (The Wall)
When we grew up and went to school
There were certain teachers who would
Hurt the children any way they could
By pouring their derision
Upon anything we did
And exposing every weakness
However carefully hidden by the kids
But in the town it was well known
When they got home at night
Their fat and psychopathic wives would thrash them
Within inches of their lives
There is a sophisticated darkness to Pink Floyd. They are to rock music what Nordic Noir is to the crime film genre. Their songs often tackle complex morality with a straightforwardness and matter-of-fact brutality that is almost Scandinavian. These are the entire lyrics for The Happiest Days Of Our Lives. It is a compact, say-what-you-see story, which nonetheless delivers great depth in just 90 seconds.
8. Breathe (Dark Side Of The Moon)
Run, rabbit, run
Dig that hole, forget the sun,
And when at last the work is done
Don’t sit down, it’s time to dig another one
Pink Floyd tend not to concern themselves with happy endings. Their lyrics are short on redemptive themes. Endure the tedious, unrewarding day. Repeat ad nauseam.
7. Have A Cigar (Wish You Were Here)
Well, I’ve always had a deep respect, and I mean that most sincerely.
The band is just fantastic, that is really what I think.
Oh by the way, which one’s Pink?
And did we tell you the name of the game, boy?
We call it Riding the Gravy Train.
In the first instalment of his autobiography, Stoned, Andrew Loog Oldham repeatedly refers to how little the record company old guard of the early 1960’s understood about rock ’n’ roll. He derides the Decca and Pye executives for the extent to which they lacked the foresight to see The Beatles and The Rolling Stones et al as anything more than a passing fad.
Have A Cigar is Pink Floyd’s poke in the eye for record label management. It is the national anthem of smug, clueless bastards. “We’re so happy we can hardly count” pretty much says it all.
“Oh by the way, which one’s Pink?” is a typically knowing, typically tongue-in-cheek line from the band that called one of its compilation albums “A Collection Of Great Dance Songs.”
6. Another Brick In The Wall Part 2 (The Wall)
We don’t need no education
We don’t need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey teacher leave them kids alone
All in all it’s just another brick in the wall
All in all you’re just another brick in the wall
I had to include this one. And I bowed to its “importance” by placing it higher up the list than I would on lyrical merit alone. Teenage rebellion delivered in the style of Soviet propaganda, to a disco beat.
I was 13 when the single was released, so I bought into the rebellion. But the rebellion suffered from over-repetition. This was the final UK number one single of the 1970’s and it stayed in the top spot for five weeks, during which it received an inordinate amount of radio airplay. The song’s two verses are identical and, in the end, it all got a bit monotonous. Thirty six years later I can appreciate its funky fury again.
5. Time (Dark Side Of The Moon)
And you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it’s sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you’re older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death
The tone of this verse is quite different from the others in Time. There is rage instead of regret. There is an acute, present tense consciousness of the passing of time, and a desperate but futile desire to claw it back. It evokes the temporal equivalent of claustrophobia. Life passing like water filling a sealed room, your latter years spent gulping and gasping in the pocket of air against the ceiling.
4. Time (Dark Side Of The Moon)
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run
You missed the starting gun
This is a hugely resonant lyric. I tear my hair out watching my teenage daughters obsess over things which, to my fifty year old eyes, really don’t matter. “You’re wasting so much valuable time,” I want to scream. “Just as you did at their age,” the voice inside my head quietly reminds me.
Nonetheless this is perhaps the greatest lesson in life, captured with beautiful economy. No one is going to tell you when to run. Be careful not to miss the starting gun.
This lyric also comes immediately before my favourite Pink Floyd guitar solo, better even, in my humble opinion, than *that* Comfortably Numb epic.
3. Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Wish You Were Here)
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!
This is the most heartfelt of eulogies. Every word, every syllable, written and sung with immense feeling. The song is a tribute to Syd Barrett, the troubled founder member of Pink Floyd. “You were caught in the crossfire of childhood and stardom” is perhaps the definitive statement of the rock star condition.
2. The Thin Ice (The Wall)
If you should go skating
On the thin ice of modern life
Dragging behind you the silent reproach
Of a million tear stained eyes
Don’t be surprised, when a crack in the ice
Appears under your feet
You slip out of your depth and out of your mind
With your fear flowing out behind you
As you claw the thin ice
Perhaps the most poetic lyric in a list which is notable for its poetry. This would have been a strong contender for number one on my list were it not for the fact that, musically, I don’t think anyone would describe this as a great song.
1. Wish You Were Here (Wish You Were Here)
Did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
Did you exchange
A walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?
This is a great song, with great lyrics. And this is my personal favourite of the three verses. Pink Floyd are the thinking person’s rock group, although they occasionally flirt with the cod-philosophical. These days a sentence like “Did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?” would be the stuff of badly typeset “inspiration” on Facebook or Instagram. But this song pre-dates all that nonsense by over three decades. Pink Floyd write high concept songs that explore dark places, and they mostly manage to stay on the right side of the thin line that separates the deep and the meaningful from the pseudo-intellectual.
Twelve lyrics from ten songs from five albums. Much to admire. Hopefully something to debate for those of you that bothered to read to the end (thank you!). Maybe even something to love…
Since you got this far, would you mind going a little further?
Clicking “Recommend” below will help to share this article with other reader
Following us on Medium (below) would be much appreciated.
And we’re on Twitter too.
Thank you.
