10 songs that Pink Floyd should have never released
There has always been a debate as to where progressive rock truly started. Most people point to King Crimson’s debut as the true start of the genre, while others think The Beatles should be given their just due for expanding the palette of what standard pop music was supposed to be. No matter where you fall on the musical spectrum, though, Pink Floyd has helped collectively expand everyone’s mind whenever they played, both for better and for worse.
Because, for all the time spent crafting album statements until they were perfect, not every one of their classic tracks could be considered flawless. As much as people try their best to argue over every piece of their catalogue deserving gold status, there are just as many that seem to be wasting time or going down some sonic avenue that no one with functional eardrums was asking for.
This isn’t limited to just one period of the group, either. From the psychedelic beginnings to their classic period with Roger Waters at the helm to even David Gilmour’s incarnation of the group that he steered throughout the 1990s, there are always bits and pieces that are not going to hold up nearly as well as many would have hoped.
But that doesn’t make any of the classic stuff any less shiny than it was before. Because no matter how many times people try to slog Pink Floyd for either being too boring or wasting time in the studio, it’s only fair to take a look at some times where that’s true to appreciate it next time ‘Comfortably Numb’ comes on.
10 songs Pink Floyd should have never released
10. ‘Two Suns in the Sunset’ – The Final Cut
In a perfect world, the classic era of Pink Floyd should have probably concluded after The Wall. It was clear that no one wanted to work together anymore, and no matter how many times Roger Waters came up with a grand vision, it was anyone’s guess whether he’d actually let the rest of the band actually record something with him. But stride on they did, and The Final Cut’s flaws are nowhere more apparent than on its closer.
Listening back to the concept behind the record, an album that’s nothing but B-sides from The Wall was never going to hold together as a full story. Waters is far too dominant on most of the record, and while it does make for some interesting moments like ‘The Fletcher Memorial Home’, ‘Two Suns in the Sunset’ is where everything finally gets eaten up under the album’s production.
From the orchestra booming away to Waters singing like he’s reciting his own version of Shakespeare, this feels like the kind of dark Disney movie that the frontman convinced himself he wanted to create. Far from a bad idea, but considering that orchestrator Mchael Kamen nearly had a nervous breakdown during recording, it wouldn’t be a shocker if this was what set him over the edge.
9. ‘Vegetable Man’
Let’s get one thing straight: including this song has nothing to do with Syd Barrett. During the group’s prime, Barrett was one of the single most creative people in England, and his contributions to the band are still the wildest concoctions to come out of psychedelic rock. As he starts to lose his mind, though, the sentiment of ‘Vegetable Man’ gets a lot more uncomfortable as the years go by.
Remember, this is about songs that shouldn’t have been released, and hearing Barrett sing about resigning himself to the fact that he will be a vegetable man for the rest of his life is a little too on the nose since it was about to start happening to him. Even when the singles started to flop, Barrett said that he could care less what he thought about his chart success.
While it’s easy to respect this kind of song as a strange character portrait, the band’s decision to stop performing it after he left may have been one of the most human moves they ever made. After all, since life was starting to imitate art, it would be far too painful to relive the events of this song over and over again.
8. ‘It Would Be So Nice’
Many people forget that Pink Floyd didn’t set out to be a prog rock outfit. It was the beginning of the Summer of Love when they got started, and the time was right to stick flowers in one’s hair and right the most blitzed-out music you could while still falling under the banner of rock. While Syd Barrett took to his whimsical side naturally, ‘It Would Be So Nice’ is one of the most forced songs they would ever create.
With Barrett having departed, it was anyone’s guess who should take over, but Richard Wright’s decision to put together a jovial tune makes little to no sense. If anything, Wright’s greatest compositions were about exploring the dark side of his mind, so hearing him lackadaisically meander through this tune sounds like he’s hoping to make lightning strike twice and get another ‘See Emily Play’ out of everything.
And given how Wright would prove himself to be one of the most interesting keyboardists in rock history, having him try to make his Paul McCartney Sgt Pepper song just feels wrong. You can’t fault them for trying to stick to the formula, but knowing where they went, they still had a lot of growing up to do.
7. ‘Louder Than Words’ – The Endless River
It’s hard to really get too upset about anything from The Endless River. Since most of it was assembled from the last takes that were made during sessions for The Division Bell, most fans should just be glad that we got to hear Richard Wright playing keyboards one last time. Everything was shaping up to be a decent tribute to their fallen friend, but everything started going wrong as soon as David Gilmour opened his mouth.
While Pink Floyd are one of the few rock acts in the world who could feasibly get away with making an all-instrumental record, ‘Louder Than Words’ feels like it shouldn’t have been included at all, sounding closer to one of the faceless songs off of A Momentary Lapse of Reason. Aside from Gilmour’s voice starting to show its age a little bit, the lyrics by him and Polly Sampson are nowhere near as pertinent as the ones on The Division Bell.
Since the entire Endless River project was made for Wright, putting an extra original tune at the end is the equivalent of asking for salmon and being brought a steak instead. Far from a bad track on its own, but let this be a reminder to every artist sequencing an album that song placement matters more than you think.
6. ‘The Narrow Way’ – Ummagumma
Is it legal for anyone to say that their least favourite Floyd record isn’t Ummagumma? After all, the band only showed up for a quarter of the record each, and even when they did, their avant-garde experiments were among some of the most befuddling tracks of their entire career. Although Gilmour gets credit for not knowing how to manage such a task, ‘The Narrow Way’ is still far from what we’d expect from the guitar maestro.
Which is strange considering it starts off fairly intriguing. The first movement shows him actually building to something with different guitar themes coming and going, but the more that the side drags out, it feels more like Gilmour was trying to experiment and just ran out of ideas halfway through.
And considering his solo material would have much better instrumental moments like on ‘Raise My Rent’ from his debut, ‘The Narrow Way’ feels more like a jam recording than anything else. But we’re nowhere near done with the sins of Ummagumma. Just you wait and see where the true nadir of the album lies.
5. ‘Corporal Clegg’ – A Saucerful of Secrets
No band can imagine a greater uphill battle than what Pink Floyd faced going into A Saucerful of Secrets. They already had to deal with Barrett slowly slipping away, and since no one was there to replace him, it’s hard to listen to this album as a fractured mess as they all try to figure out what they want their group to be. ‘Set the Controls for the Heart of Sun’ was at least closer to what they were, but ‘Corporal Clegg’ is the kind of whimsy that would make Paul McCartney scoff.
When trying to recapture the same feeling as Barrett, Waters shot himself in the foot and ended up going too overboard by singing about this tune as a kind of nursery rhyme. Better songs have been made with far less of a premise, but the one thing that kneecaps this one is whoever decided it would be a good idea to have the main instrument by kazoos.
No matter how much people try to take this seriously, hearing them fiddle around with the solo sounds like they’re in the middle of a schoolyard and trying to make as much noise as possible. It’s a shame because there’s a good song in here somewhere, but if they had just turned the kazoos down in the mix, maybe we could have had something that was salvageable while keeping with Barrett’s theme of psychedelia.
4. ‘Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast’ – Atom Heart Mother
Looking back on their career, it doesn’t seem like any member of Floyd wants to deal with Atom Heart Mother anymore. While the epic song is still not that bad by their standards, no one’s really expecting either Gilmour or Waters to bring it up in the setlist any time soon. There are still some decent gems to be found here, though, but their idea to close out the album with avant-garde spoken-word pieces doesn’t do it any favours.
After coming off of brilliant tracks like ‘Fat Old Sun’, ‘Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast’ feels like the moment where everyone stopped trying. Even though the instrumental ambient noise is halfway decent, spending 12 minutes recording one of their stoned friends waking up in the morning and fixing himself breakfast feels like a deliberate attempt to screw with the audience.
Compared to everything else on the album, this feels like everyone still trying to get the taste of Ummagumma out of their mouths before moving on to something even bigger. There was definitely growth here, but ‘Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast’ is the musical equivalent of a teenager just settling into puberty. It’s awkward, and more often than not, people want to forget that it ever happened.
3. ‘Seamus’ – Meddle
For most fans of Pink Floyd, Meddle is where everything started going right. They had already begun woodshedding their pieces on the previous record, but once ‘Echoes’ was unleashed, the world was their prog rock oyster, and no one could really stop them. Right before we get one of the greatest progressive exercises of all time, though, ‘Seamus’ is let out of his cage and comes in to disrupt everything.
Then again, the story behind the song is kind of cute, considering that Steve Marriott’s dog visited the studio, and the band wanted to see how he reacted to hearing the music. There’s a decent bit of experimenting to be had with that premise, but as they start kicking into a decent blues jam, hearing the dog barking makes him sound like he’s in pain half the time, especially around the halfway mark, where he starts yelping.
But look no further than their similar track on Live at Pompeii, where Wright struggles to suppress his smile as he tries to properly mic the dog. Yeah, this is a novelty song if there ever was one for Pink Floyd, but even though I can appreciate a bit of humour, putting it next to one of their masterpieces just makes this goofy little tune look worse.
2. ‘Several Species of Small Furry Animals…’ – Ummagumma
For all of its faults, Ummagumma at least sounds like a good idea on paper. After all, The Beatles had made their self-titled album out of four disparate artists cutting the equivalent of solo tracks, so why not break up Pink Floyd down to their individual members and have them put together something for each side? But while Richard Wright was most likely equipped for this kind of exercise, Roger Waters hit a major stumbling block by deciding to go all-in on the avant-garde angle.
While ‘Grantchester Meadows’ is still a decent listen all things considered, ‘Several Species’ is probably more interesting for its title than anything else. There are certainly moments in the piece that make people’s ears perk up, but it’s usually for all the wrong reasons, sounding closer to Waters using whatever he can get his hands on and making something worthwhile out of it.
Even though ‘Careful With That Axe Eugene’ has some of Waters’s best wails, hearing him go for broke here just sounds like a genuine scream of pain. There’s no doubt that he was still hurting over Barrett’s departure, but the whole reason Wish You Were Here works is because of the more nuanced way he approaches his grief.
1. ‘Don’t Leave Me Now’ – The Wall
There are many moments on The Wall that are a bit strange to revisit today. It’s completely understandable for Waters to want to make something for himself to express his discomfort as a rockstar, but once the fascist regalia started to come out, that’s when many of us started to ask questions. Evoking bold iconography is one thing, but hearing Waters whine for a few minutes isn’t something anyone has to be subjected to.
Before you ask, yes, I know that this is key exposition for the story, but considering Pink’s breaking point comes when the groupies leave, we could have done without a good chunk of this song playing out on the album. Despite clearly being meant as a theatre piece, Waters is far from the greatest singer for this kind of performance, which ends up sounding unintentionally funny as he starts to whimper.
Even though losing it would disrupt the flow of the album, taking out this song and bringing in tunes like ‘When The Tigers Broke Free’ further on in the track list could have been far more interesting. But as it stands, all we’re left with is a man singing the equivalent of opera, and rather than hearing a man in pain, it’s easy to just picture a dying cat half the time.
