(Credits: Storm Thorgerson / Sony Music Entertainment)
Mon 9 February 2026 19:24, UK
Pink Floyd is the exact opposite band that you’d think would be the biggest rock and roll band in the world.
They played music on their own terms and weren’t about to play the singles game like everyone else, yet there’s a good chance that they could sell out stadiums around the world if David Gilmour and Roger Waters miraculously manage to put the past behind them. But even with all of the mile-long solos and 15-minute experiments in their catalogue, sometimes the hit parade can find some room for them every once in a while.
Then again, the Syd Barrett era was going to be more single-friendly than what came after the fact. Barrett may have had some of the single strangest records that anyone had ever heard when he first came out with The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, but songs like ‘See Emily Play’ and ‘Arnold Layne’ at least had solid hooks compared to the rest of the band trying to do the same thing on tunes like ‘Apples and Oranges’.
Waters learned pretty quickly that they weren’t a singles band, so it was much easier for them to play to their strengths whenever they performed live. A song like ‘Careful With That Axe Eugene’ was never going to get played on the radio due to its crushing length and Waters screaming over the top of everything, but you couldn’t deny that it was entertaining when they performed the same piece in Pompeii once they had a lot more experience under their belt.
They still weren’t looking to have hits in the traditional sense, but that didn’t mean that some hooks didn’t stick out back in the day. Dark Side of the Moon was designed to be listened to as one continuous piece of music, but it takes a special kind of musician to be able to write a song in 7/4 and have everyone on Earth grooving to the bassline like the one in ‘Money’. But if there’s an album that shouldn’t have had hit singles, it should have logically been The Wall.
Because, really, how the hell would that even work? The whole album is one long operatic piece, and since it follows a linear storyline, how the hell was anyone supposed to enjoy one of the standout tracks when they were missing out on all the context? There were pieces that would have worked like ‘Comfortably Numb’ or ‘Young Lust’, but Bob Ezrin remembered the band being more than a little bit confused when he suggested stretching out ‘Another Brick in the Wall Part II’ for radio.
The tune wasn’t exactly the catchiest tune in the world, and it was far too short for the average hit single, but given how much the drums sounded like the disco scene around the same time, it at least felt at home next to the rest of the charts at the time, with Ezrin recalling, “When we played with the disco beat I said, ‘Man, this is a hit! But it’s one minute 20, it’s not going to play. We need two verses and two choruses.’ And they said, ‘Well you’re not bloody getting them. We don’t do singles, so f**k you.’”
But Ezrin wasn’t necessarily going to take no for an answer. He was the one that restructured Alice Cooper and Kiss songs to sound great on the radio, and even if it meant adding a few subtle touches that Gilmour put on that brilliant outro solo, the song was bound to become a monster once the children’s choir came in on the second verse.
The song might break every rule for what a traditional hit single is supposed to be, but then again, Pink Floyd weren’t the kind of band to rely on a singalong chorus to become legendary. They already had passion behind every single note they played, and when they eventually played the song live on Is There Anybody Out There, hearing the crowd come to life when they sang ‘We don’t need no education’ had to feel vindicating for Ezrin.