Ranking every song Syd Barrett wrote for Pink Floyd
There wouldn’t be a Pink Floyd without Syd Barrett. The legendary singer-songwriter forged the initial identity of one of the biggest bands of all time, and in just a few short years, laid the foundation from which they would build upon for a full two decades. Barrett may have only been in Pink Floyd for just over three years, but his effect on the group was monumental.
Even after his departure, Pink Floyd still couldn’t get beyond their former leader. Classic albums like The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, and The Wall were all informed by Barrett’s descent into mental illness and reclusion. When Barrett originally left the group in 1968, it took nearly half a decade for Pink Floyd to find a unique sound that wasn’t derivative of Barrett’s psychedelic vision.
During his brief tenure with Pink Floyd, only 22 songs written by Barrett wound up being officially released. Of those, four were recorded when the band was still known as The Tea Set in 1964, and three were shelved after Barrett left the band. Those seven songs never saw a contemporary release, with the tracks not appearing on record until after Barrett’s death. For most fans, Barrett’s entire oeuvre in Pink Floyd consisted of just 15 songs.
For this list, we’ve taken into account every song that Syd Barrett wrote that was officially released during his tenure with Pink Floyd. That includes all the material from Piper at the Gates of Dawn, ‘Jugband Blues’ from A Saucerful of Secrets, the band’s earliest singles, and material from albums compilation albums like 1965: Their First Recordings and The Early Years 1965 – 1972. Here are all of Syd Barrett’s Pink Floyd songs, ranked in order of greatness.
Ranking every Pink Floyd song by Syd Barrett:
22. ‘Scream Thy Last Scream’
‘Scream Thy Last Scream’ can only partially be considered a Barrett song: although he composed the track, Nick Mason takes the main lead vocal line, with Barrett’s vocal pitched up to chipmunk levels. The song probably wouldn’t have been made any better had Barrett decided to take on the lead vocal himself.
A cacophony of noise and randomness, ‘Scream Thy Last Scream’ is the perfect illustration of the kind of nonsense that Pink Floyd were getting fed up with when they kicked Barrett to the kerb. It’s certainly an interesting listening experience, but it’s hardly an enjoyable one.
21. ‘The Gnome’
1967 was either a great year or a terrible year for gnomes. In April, a novice singer by the name of David Bowie released a highly irritating single called ‘The Laughing Gnome’ featuring himself conversing with the titular magical figure. Then, in August, Pink Floyd released a slightly better song covering much of the same ground.
Depending on how much whimsy you can stomach, ‘The Gnome’ represents Pink Floyd doing their best Lewis Carroll. Unfortunately, ‘The Gnome’ never really extends beyond anything other than novelty. Grimble Grumble can stay in his home drinking his wine all he wants, but that’s not the rabbit hole I care to go down while listening to the Floyd.
20. ‘Double O Bo’
A basic rocker centred around the band’s love of Bo Diddley, ‘Double O Bo’ is the song that most clearly sees Pink Floyd wearing their early influences on their sleeves. Barrett namechecks Diddley in the song’s lyrics, drawing a straight line to his swiping of ‘Hey Bo Diddley’.
‘Double O Bo’ sounds nothing like what Pink Floyd would become, and because of that, it has some kind of strange charm to it. But once you get past that, there’s nothing to this overly simplistic copy of a classic rock and roll beat.
19. ‘Remember Me’
There’s a fascinating alternative universe where Barrett never takes acid and Pink Floyd ends up becoming one the many forgotten beat groups of the mid-1960s. Songs like ‘Remember Me’ would be essential to rave-ups and sockhops that would continue on for another year or so, but the Floyd didn’t have much use for them once they adopted their now-familiar moniker.
Barrett’s vocals on ‘Remember Me’ are the only real memorable part of the song. Taking on the guise of a gonzo cartoon character, Barrett reveals some of the humour and wackiness that caused people to gravitate towards him before his mental troubles began. That’s not exactly enough to save the song, but it does make for a notable “What-if”.
18. ‘Lucy Leave’
The amount of evolution that Pink Floyd experienced in less than a year was remarkable. In 1964, the group were a rough and ready garage rock act called The Tea Set. By 1965, they were one of the first psychedelic bands in Britain. The group’s earliest recordings remain curiosities, if for no other reason than to track the rapid change that the group was going through.
‘Lucy Leaves’ sounds like it should have been recorded by The Kinks in their earliest years. It certainly could have benefitted from Dave Davies’ crunchy guitar tone, as opposed to the thin drive that comes out of Barrett’s guitar. He’s certainly committed to the vocal, shouting out a basic love ode that the band would quickly move on from.
17. ‘Butterfly’
The one song from The Tea Set sessions that most clearly points toward the sound that Pink Floyd would embrace in the future was ‘Butterfly’, a wonky and chromatic song that infuses some of the earliest twee and uniquely British sensibilities that Barrett ever explored in his songwriting.
Although it’s still coated in some of the derivative beat music tropes that the band were dependent on at the time, there’s a real sense of surrealism to seeing Barrett run around trying to catch girls in a butterfly net. It’s not top-quality Barrett strangeness, but it is a sign of things to come.
16. ‘Vegetable Man’
Written around the same time as ‘Jugband Blues’, ‘Vegetable Man’ is another sardonic take on the descent that Barrett found himself going through towards the end of his tenure in Pink Floyd. Unreleased for decades, ‘Vegetable Man’ garnered a reputation for being an upsetting and even potentially frightening listen.
The actual song isn’t nearly as bad as its reputation suggests. Its chromatic build certainly has a fair bit of tension, but when Barrett calls out the eponymous figure, he sounds more like a superhero than a harbinger of evil. It’s not one of Barrett’s greatest songs, but it’s a fascinating document of his last words with Pink Floyd.
15. ‘Candy and a Currant Bun’
The B-side to ‘Arnold Layne’ doesn’t quite have the same pull as the A-side, but what ‘Candy and a Currant Bun’ lacks in terms of sophistication, it more than makes up for in atmosphere. Featuring one of Barrett’s most commanding vocal performances, ‘Candy and a Currant Bun’ bridges the gap between Pink Floyd’s early beat music and later psychedelic pop.
While it probably won’t stand up against any of the band’s beloved early material, ‘Candy and a Currant Bun’ is, at the very least, a pleasant enough diversion. There should probably be more behind it, but hey, it’s a B-side for a reason.
14. ‘In the Beechwoods’
Barrett left quite a few unfinished tracks when he quit/was kicked out of Pink Floyd. Most of them were near completion and simply dropped as the band attempted to find their new identity without their previous leader, but ‘In the Beechwoods’ wouldn’t have made sense to release even if they wanted to.
It’s not certain whether ‘In the Beechwoods’ was always meant to be an instrumental or whether it was a track that never received the proper vocal overdub. In any case, it’s a wonderfully unique track that mixes psychedelic with sunshine pop. It doesn’t have much in the way of substance, but it’s one of the better songs that was left unreleased once Barrett was on the outs.
13. ‘Apples and Oranges’
The turning point for Pink Floyd’s transition between the Syd Barrett era and the David Gilmour era came on the single ‘Apples and Oranges’. Released one month before Gilmour officially joined the group, the single would be the final single release helmed by Barrett’s version of the band.
Fuzzier and more unhinged than most of Pink Floyd’s material prior to its release, ‘Apples and Oranges’ nonetheless has some clever turns and fascinating instrumentation, namely Wright’s musical box piano. It doesn’t hold a candle to Barrett’s other singles, but it does accurately represent the change he was rapidly going through at the time.
12. ‘The Scarecrow’
Most of Pink Floyd’s psychedelic material relied heavily on slabs of white noise and full arrangements. The sounds that Richard Wright, Roger Waters, Nick Mason, and Syd Barrett could produce always amounted to something greater than their individual contributions. But occasionally, the group would strip it all back and see what they could do with less.
The minimalism of ‘The Scarecrow’ almost makes it a folk song. Behind the clip-clop percussion and Barrett’s vocals/guitar, there’s is mostly just Wright’s organ. Toward the song’s end, the arrangement is filled out, but just as you get a hold of it, it starts to fade. If there were more to ‘The Scarecrow’ it would warrant a higher place on this list, but for what it is, the song is a solid addition to the Pink Floyd canon.
11. ‘Astronomy Domine’
Between 1965 and 1967, The Tea Set went through a radical transformation. They changed their name to Pink Floyd, stumbled onto some of the first freakouts ever held in London, and completely changed their musical style from beat-style rock to spacey psychedelia. By the time they recorded their debut, Piper at the Gates of Dawn, the transformation was complete.
‘Space rock’ wasn’t really a thing until Pink Floyd began pioneering live performance in the mid-1960s. With lights swirling and cymbals crashing, it’s easy to see why a song like ‘Astronomy Domine’ was the perfect fit. It doesn’t quite reach the heights that some of their other space odysseys do, but it’s a clear distillation of Barrett’s contributions to the band.
10. ‘Lucifer Sam’
For being such an innovative voice within British culture, Syd Barrett did occasionally show off his influences in his songs. That included a love of reverb-heavy surf rock, with Barrett taking the muddy tones of Dick Dale and transmogrifying them into rubbery acid-soaked headiness.
‘Lucifer Sam’ almost sounds like it could be the theme song to a 1960s detective show, with its slinky central riff slipping and sliding around the composition. But once Barrett launches into the song’s verse, his own artistic instincts take over.
9. ‘Matilda Mother’
British rock music was just beginning to shed its American influences by the time Pink Floyd was coming into their own. Baroque pop was emerging out of London recording studios, with everyone from The Rolling Stones to The Kinks to The Who plugging into distinctly British points of view for the first time.
‘Matilda Mother’ could very well be the most British song that Pink Floyd ever recorded, with royal overtones and Barrett’s sharp, almost posh accent spinning tales of majestic surrealism. All the while, Barrett (and Richard Wright) yearn for a return to simpler times, something that would become more difficult as Barrett began to slip into his own world.
8. ‘Chapter 24’
One of the densest and most heady songs that Pink Floyd ever recorded was ‘Chapter 24’, a singular interpretation of the I Ching from Barrett. In less than four minutes, Barrett explores some of the deeper questions of the universe that were contained within the Fû hexagram, the focus of the titular 24th chapter.
Although it reads less like an insightful exploration of Chinese divinity and more like an acid-soaked set of hippie ideals, ‘Chapter 24’ nonetheless represents one of the deeper explorations that Barrett ever made in his lyrics. It remains one of his most underrated songs, just waiting to be reexamined by fans.
7. ‘Bike’
The closing track from Piper at the Gates of Dawn is one of the most hectic and wild that Syd Barrett ever wrote. Over the course of three minutes, Barrett lays out a strange quasi-love song featuring homeless mice, stolen (or borrowed) bikes, cloaks, and gingerbread men. Just as Barrett seems to get around his lyrics, two gunshots rocket the listener straight back into more verses.
Just as it seems like things couldn’t get any crazier, a solid minute of random noises and general mania closes out the band’s debut LP. ‘Bike’ is part demented surrealism, part musique concrète, and all pure Barrett.
6. ‘Flaming’
It wasn’t certain how Pink Floyd was going to function as a singles band. Although their first two releases, ‘Arnold Layne’ and ‘See Emily Play’, were moderate chart success, the band were evolving so rapidly that it was almost impossible for singles to keep up. ‘Flaming’ was one of the band’s stalwart live songs, so it seemed natural to pick it up for a single release in the US.
Complete with cuckoo clocks, images of unicorns, and Barrett’s taunt that he can see you even if you can’t see him, I’m sure ‘Flaming’ both blew minds and freaked people out when the Floyd first crafted it. The song was such a staple in the band’s live shows that David Gilmour had to briefly take over singing the song when he first joined the group.
5. ‘Pow R. Toc H.’
It’s easy to forget now, but Pink Floyd was scary back when they first came onto the scene. With a live show that featured seizure-inducing strobe lights and piercing shrieks from Roger Waters, the Floyd had enough freight to permanently traumatise anyone who might have been having a bad trip while listening to their music.
Led off by Barrett’s echoing vocals and animalistic noises, ‘Pow R. Toc H.’ is one of the strangest songs that ever came out of the Pink Floyd catalogue. But once the bizarre introduction is done, Richard Wright tinkles away on one of his jazziest and loungiest piano lines. As experimental as the early Floyd ever got, ‘Pow R. Toc H.’ is early Pink Floyd at their exploratory best.
4. ‘Jugband Blues’
By the end of 1967, Barrett’s mental state was sharply on the decline. And yet, in spite of his break from reality, Barrett was remarkably self-aware when he composed what would become his final recorded contribution to Pink Floyd, ‘Jugband Blues’.
Often characterised as “the sound of madness”, ‘Jugband Blues’ also features one of Barrett’s most sly and clever set of lyrics, proving that he was put together enough to see the effect he was having on the people around him by the end of his tenure. It was a fitting, and ultimately tragic, farewell to his time with Pink Floyd.
3. ‘Interstellar Overdrive’
The concept was simple: run through a descending melody line, kick up as much noise as possible, and see where things went from there. The brilliance of ‘Interstellar Overdrive’ lies in its simplicity: there’s nowhere for the song to go, so it breaks out of its bounds and launches into something completely different every time it gets played.
Heavy on improvisation, the version of ‘Interstellar Overdrive’ that appears on Piper at the Gates of Dawn tops out at nearly ten minutes. Live versions could stretch out to nearly 45 minutes, with the song being an early forerunner to the kind of music that the Grateful Dead would perfect across the ocean. It’s Pink Floyd at their most mad, but also at their space rock height.
2. ‘See Emily Play’
Despite his penchant for psychedelic whimsy, Syd Barrett also had a real knack for crafting pop hooks. His best songs were ones that blended the two sides of his songwriting seamlessly, and when it comes to getting the best out of both worlds, few songs in the Pink Floyd catalogue reach the heights that ‘See Emily Play’ does.
Featuring one of Barrett’s catchiest choruses, ‘See Emily Play’ is a pure pop delight that could have represented a path forward for Pink Floyd. Instead, Barrett’s descent made that impossible. But when he heard the song again years later while watching his own BBC Omnibus documentary, Barrett expressed fondness for ‘See Emily Play’, solidifying the track as one of his best.
1. ‘Arnold Layne’
It seems almost cruel to call Barrett’s first single the best song he ever wrote, but the truth of the matter is that ‘Arnold Layne’ represents the best of what Barrett had to offer the world of music. A potent mix of transgressive themes, psychedelic sounds, and pop hooks, ‘Arnold Layne’ made Pink Floyd instantly notorious.
But with nearly six decades removed from its initial release, ‘Arnold Layne’ remains perhaps the most enduring song that Syd Barrett ever wrote for Pink Floyd. Although it started out as a promising beginning, ‘Arnold Layne’ now represents the apex of what made Barrett such a singularly brilliant figure in British music history.
