{"id":537705,"date":"2026-03-22T01:11:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-22T01:11:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/537705\/"},"modified":"2026-03-22T01:11:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-22T01:11:10","slug":"on-the-charts-46-years-ago-pink-floyd-scored-their-only-no-1-hit-with-a-timeless-sequel-protest-song","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/537705\/","title":{"rendered":"On the Charts 46 Years Ago, Pink Floyd Scored Their Only No. 1 Hit With a Timeless Sequel Protest Song"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pink Floyd<\/a> has released some of the best-selling albums in rock history. But the band generally hasn\u2019t been known for lighting up the pop charts with individual singles. This has been particularly true in the U.S., where Pink Floyd didn\u2019t have a Top 40 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 until 1973. They finally made it with \u201cMoney,\u201d from the group\u2019s massively successful eighth studio effort, The Dark Side Of The Moon. The song peaked at No. 13 on the Hot 100.<\/p>\n

After \u201cMoney,\u201d Pink Floyd had only one other major pop hit in the U.S., but it was a big one. On March 22, 1980, \u201cAnother Brick In The Wall (Part II),\u201d from the band\u2019s chart-topping 1979 concept album The Wall, hit No. 1 on the Hot 100<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[RELATED: Pink Floyd Turned Into the Very Thing They Were Criticizing After This Song Hit the Top 20]<\/a><\/p>\n

The song knocked Queen\u2019s old-time rock \u2018n\u2019 roll homage \u201cCrazy Little Thing Called Love\u201d from the top spot on the tally. \u201cAnother Brick In The Wall (Part II)\u201d spent four weeks at No. 1 before being replaced by Blondie\u2019s \u201cCall Me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnother Brick In The Wall (Part II)\u201d was part of a three-part composition by Pink Floyd bassist, vocalist, and principal songwriter Roger Waters<\/a>. The song rails against the physical punishment and abusive treatment to which some teachers were guilty of subjecting their students in U.K. schools.<\/p>\n

Waters and guitarist David Gilmour shared lead vocals on the track, which includes some disco elements. The song also features additional vocals by a children\u2019s choir from Islington Green School in London.<\/p>\n

The idea for the children\u2019s choir and for adding disco elements to the track came from The Wall\u2019s producer, Bob Ezrin. Ezrin also encouraged the band to release the song as a single.<\/p>\n

More About \u201cAnother Brick In The Wall (Part II)\u201d<\/p>\n

In a 1979 interview<\/a> with British radio presenter Tommy Vance, Waters explained that \u201cAnother Brick In The Wall (Part II)\u201d was inspired by his own experiences at a boys\u2019 grammar school.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy school life was very like that,\u201d Waters maintained. \u201cOh, it was awful, it was really terrible. When I hear people whining on now about bringing back grammar schools, it really makes me quite ill to listen to it. \u2026 I want to make it plain that \u2026 some of the men who taught there were very nice guys. \u2026 [I]t\u2019s not meant to be a blanket condemnation of teachers everywhere, but the bad ones can really do people in.\u201d<\/p>\n

He continued, \u201c[T]here were some [teachers] at my school who were just incredibly bad and treated the children so badly, just putting them down \u2026 all the time. Never encouraging them to do things, not really trying to interest them in anything, just trying to keep them quiet and still, and crush them into the right shape, so that they would go to university and \u2018do well.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Prior to \u201cAnother Brick In The Wall (Part II)\u201d topping the Hot 100, it spent five weeks at No. 1 on the U.K. singles chart in December 1979 and January 1980.<\/p>\n

The Wall, meanwhile, spent 15 straight weeks atop the Billboard 200 chart, from January through April 1980. The double album has been certified 23-times Platinum by the RIAA for equivalent sales of 23 million units in the U.S.<\/p>\n

In 1983, \u201cAnother Brick In The Wall\u201d won the Best Original Song prize at the U.K.\u2019s BAFTA Film Awards thanks to its use in the film adaption of The Wall.<\/p>\n

Album:The Wall [1979]<\/p>\n

In 2021, Floyd frontman Roger Waters turned down a \u201chuge, huge amount of money\u201d from Facebook for the right to use \u201cAnother Brick in the Wall (part II)\u201d in an ad campaign. For years Waters had been a very vocal supporter of Julian Assange, the head of Wikileaks, who was imprisoned in 2019 for espionage. Waters viewed Assange\u2019s arrest as an attempt to silence true journalism and to stifle dissenting voices. He sees Facebook and the other big tech platforms as being part of that effort to silence dissent and \u201ctake over absolutely everything.\u201d Waters minced no words in his refusal of the money, stating, \u201cAnd the answer is, F- you. No f-in\u2019 way.\u201d He also called Facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg \u201cone of the most powerful idiots in the world\u201d after questioning how Zuckerberg became so powerful after starting FaceMash, which rated Harvard women based on their looks. Waters did not make the announcement on social media. He did it the old fashioned way: at a press conference.<\/p>\n

(Photo by Rob Verhorst\/Redferns)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pink Floyd has released some of the best-selling albums in rock history. But the band generally hasn\u2019t been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":537706,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[2617,88,216,61771],"class_list":["post-537705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-classic-rock","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-pink-floyd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=537705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537705\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/537706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=537705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=537705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=537705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}