Did Pink Floyd have a number one single?
Prog rock is never a genre that caters too much to the pop charts. Anyone who’s looking to get a hit has to make everything as compact as possible to fit into radio guidelines, and that doesn’t always mean making the most complicated song possible with multiple movements spread across 20 minutes. While Pink Floyd always played fast and loose for what constitutes a progressive rock outfit, they at least knew how to make something close to a hit when they wanted to.
Then again, even some of the biggest songs of their catalogue got that way from being album tracks first. By the time Syd Barrett left, no one was going to hear songs like ‘See Emily Play’ again, and while tracks like ‘Money’ off of Dark Side of the Moon did gain some traction, it placed well outside of the usual hit parade to garner any major attention from fairweather rock fans.
By the time the band started making albums like Wish You Were Here and Animals, none of their songs were meant to fit into the typical pop formula. Half of Animals focused on songs that went well over ten minutes, and while some promotional songs for the album, like ‘Have a Cigar’, were released to radio, the band had already cultivated a fan base that had become more invested in the albums rather than any hit song.
But no one was truly prepared for their grand vision for The Wall. The whole point behind the record was to tell a sprawling rock opera about someone who closes themselves off from society, which meant that every piece of the record would blend into each other. This should have been the moment when the band transcended the charts altogether, but one song was good enough to warrant their first-ever chart-topping single.
So, what was Pink Floyd’s only number one single?
Despite being placed in the middle of the first side of the record, ‘Another Brick in the Wall (Part II)’ became an unexpected smash hit upon release, reaching number one in the UK. While the idea of a sequel song in a three-part suite of tunes under the same name shouldn’t be anywhere near the charts, it all has to do with the production values put behind everything.
First of all, the song’s chorus of children singing about not needing education is still one of the biggest earworms in their catalogue, but the rhythm section does a lot for the tune. Since this was 1980, the glossy backing track wasn’t that far removed from the disco rhythm sections happening around the same time, either, leading to many people getting the record as a proper dance track.
Even for a song that’s this straightforward, it’s not a typical pop arrangement by any means. The track itself doesn’t have a proper verse and chorus outside of the hook line, and after repeating twice, the outro of the song devolves into some of the greatest guitar licks David Gilmour ever played, as well as narration from the schoolteacher towards the end of the song whining about how the children aren’t finishing their meat.
The album itself might have pure hell for people like Richard Wright to work on, but even with a pop single, Pink Floyd were still breaking down barriers. No one in their right mind would call the pop charts progressive, but getting a piece of a rock opera on the hit parade featuring spoken-word narration, a one-verse structure, and a disco beat is the definition of moving music forward.
