They didn’t find it on “Ummagumma,” a wildly experimental record that too often drifts into nonsense for its own good.įor “Ummagumma,” the four remaining band members decided to write and record the tracks separately, and the end results are quite a mess. The departure of Barrett in 1968 sent Pink Floyd searching for the new sound that would redefine their career. In this article, we place all 15 entries of Pink Floyd’s studio record output under the microscope and rank them from worst to best.
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Although the quartet of bassist Roger Waters, guitarist David Gilmour, keyboardist Rick Wright and drummer Nick Mason made some incredible music during their time together, some of their works don’t hold up as well as others. That said, not everything they touched turned to gold. Very few can say that they’ve had a discography as thoroughly enjoyable and as impactful as Pink Floyd. It’s clear to see why, as monumental records like “The Dark Side of the Moon” and “The Wall” have stood the test of time while also providing the blueprint for some of music’s greatest accomplishments. Starting life as a psychedelic outfit under the leadership of Syd Barrett, Pink Floyd eventually grew into progressive rock legends that many revere as one of the greatest and most influential artists of all time. Following a one-night-only reunion with Waters in 2005 for Live 8, and Wright’s death from cancer in 2008, Gilmour and Mason released the final Pink Floyd album, The Endless River, in 2014, bringing one of the most transformative and tumultuous bands in rock history to a peaceful rest.Pink Floyd Albums Ranked from Worst to BestĬhances are that you’ve heard of the name Pink Floyd. Waters continued to exert outsized creative control over the band until his 1985 departure, after which the remaining members carried on under the Floyd name into the ‘90s. 2”, affirmed the band’s knack for providing accessible gateways into dense, demanding works). Waters’ vision became evermore paramount on a string of classic LPs that explored personal loss (1975’s Barrett-inspired elegy Wish You Were Here) and political power structures (1977’s Orwellian parable Animals), culminating in 1979’s colossal arena-rock opera The Wall (though the fact that the latter release yielded Pink Floyd’s only No. Dark Side was also the record where Waters’ lyrical voice came to the fore, through critiques of British society that were as cutting as anything coming from the punks who purported to hate the band. Harnessing their exploratory aesthetic into a taut, seamless song cycle, the album would spend 14 consecutive years on the Billboard charts, and it remains the benchmark for studio-crafted art-rock excellence that bands like Tame Impala continue to chase, while its pioneering use of electronics inspired adventurous dance acts like Daft Punk. Albums like Ummagumma and Meddle ushered in the progressive-rock era with their sprawling, side-long compositions (and, decades later, proved foundational to indie movements like post-rock and doom metal).īut with 1973’s The Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd were no longer strictly the domain of underground-music heads.
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Which is ironic, given that they were initially led by the irrepressibly charismatic Syd Barrett, whose madcap genius spawned the brain-scrambling psychedelia of 1967’s The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.īut after Barrett’s erratic behaviour prompted his dismissal from the group a year later, Floyd transitioned into a more enigmatic cosmic-rock collective powered by Roger Waters’ propulsive basslines, Richard Wright’s ethereal keyboard drones, drummer Nick Mason’s tense time-keeping and the deeply emotive guitar squeals of Barrett’s replacement, David Gilmour. Pink Floyd are notable not only for what they popularised (immaculate hi-fi production, elaborate concept albums, planetarium laser shows) but for what they negated: With their carefully cultivated sense of mystique, they proved you needn’t play the role of camera-mugging pop stars to become one of the world’s most famous rock bands.