{"id":703309,"date":"2026-07-21T12:07:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-21T12:07:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/703309\/"},"modified":"2026-07-21T12:07:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-21T12:07:12","slug":"the-1991-song-that-made-roger-waters-feel-physically-sick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/703309\/","title":{"rendered":"The 1991 song that made Roger Waters feel physically sick"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Roger<\/p>\n

Credit: Far Out \/ YouTube Still<\/p>\n

Tue 21 July 2026 9:35, UK <\/p>\n

The first lesson every musician should learn is that all their work is malleable. Even the perception of Pink Floyd<\/a>\u2019s Dark Side of the Moon is subject to the weird whims of culture.<\/p>\n

As much as they might think that they own the copyright to everything they\u2019ve ever played, no one can own chords or a collection of seuqenced notes, and it\u2019s not all that uncomsequencedmon to see someone take the foundation of what they\u2019ve listened to and come out with something completely different a few years down the road.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It might get frustrating for people who take their art too seriously, but Roger Waters drew the line when he saw some of his colleagues\u2019 work being taken out of context. And in a particularly ugly manner, when the capitalistic 1990s, amid the boom of MTV, began to twist counterculture towards the will of a subpar cash-in.<\/p>\n

Because when listening to any kind of music, it\u2019s important to recognise what the artist is at least trying to do with it. The true artists of the 1960s usually had an agenda when making some of their greatest songs, and when some people use them for the exact opposite message, it can either spark annoyance or outright anger in the fans. <\/p>\n

And it\u2019s not like Waters didn\u2019t have a lot on his mind when he was making some of his finest records. While people can absent-mindedly sing along to \u2018Another Brick in the Wall\u2019 when Waters talks about not needing no education, the main crux of the problem has to do with where it fits in the confines of the story, especially when addressing the issues that take place to this day amongst domineering teachers.<\/p>\n

\u201cMarky Mark having a hit record with \u2018Walk on the Wild Side\u2019 was something that turned my stomach to a large degree and I don\u2019t like that using of other peoples, mind you Lou Reed doesn\u2019t seem to mind so why should I but there\u2019s something about it that uh, that affects me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Roger Waters<\/p>\n

He wasn\u2019t even the only one willing to address the greater problems with the world, either. John Lennon had broken down barriers for what could be discussed in a rock song on Plastic Ono Band, and Bob Dylan had been rewriting the way that most people think about art in general in his music, but the minute that The Velvet Underground came out, most people didn\u2019t realise what they were listening to.<\/p>\n

If the hippies were talking about Flower Power and free love, Lou Reed was practically the inverse of that philosophy. The dream going on in San Francisco was as far away from the streets of New York as possible, and Reed himself was far more content to talk about the seedy side of Manhattan where people were as well-versed in poets as they were in heroin junkies.<\/p>\n

So when painting that picture, the last thing that you want to see is a jock in the middle of things, and the minute that Waters heard Marky Mark\u2019s song \u2018Wildside\u2019, he was absolutely disgusted, saying<\/a>, \u201cI hate the whole idea of sampling. You know, nothing is more loathsome, well there are more loathsome things but, well, Marky Mark having a hit record with \u2018Walk on the Wild Side\u2019 was something that turned my stomach to a large degree.\u201d <\/p>\n

Angered by the would-be actor\u2019s effort, Waters raged, \u201cI don\u2019t like that using of other peoples, mind you Lou Reed doesn\u2019t seem to mind so why should I but there\u2019s something about it that uh, that affects me.\u201d In essence, a classic succumbing to becoming a commercial piece of trash aligned with alarmed Waters about the modern world when he was writing the likes of \u2018Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)\u2019<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While there\u2019s no doubt that Mr Wahlberg certainly had some dark periods in his personal life and perhaps found genuine solace in the classic \u201860s song, hearing Reed\u2019s soft tune on this track feels wrong. If anything, \u2018Can I Kick It\u2019 by A Tribe Called Quest does a better job at interpolating the melody, especially since Q-Tip\u2019s laid-back flow meshes well with the lackadaisical way that Reed sang the original version<\/a> of the tune.<\/p>\n

Although Waters\u2019s stance on sampling has become a bit dated considering how many people incorporate it into their work now, he does make a good point about the tasteful way to use someone else\u2019s work. It\u2019s one thing to get the basis of a song together, but if it\u2019s all done in service to a sample that doesn\u2019t complement the words, there\u2019s no real point in fleshing it out (unless, of course, you just want a quick hit with a tried and tested melody).<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

ADD AS A PREFERRED SOURCE ON GOOGLE \"\"\/ <\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Credit: Far Out \/ YouTube Still Tue 21 July 2026 9:35, UK The first lesson every musician should…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":402025,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,34574,128,15742,34789,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-703309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-mark-wahlberg","tag-music","tag-pink-floyd","tag-roger-waters","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=703309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703309\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/402025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=703309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=703309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=703309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}