‘One Slip’: The worst Pink Floyd single ever made
While most of the big names in 1970s progressive rock had imploded from the ever-bloating compositions and theatrics crippling the scene’s integrity, and punk’s out-of-nowhere rug pull from underneath, Pink Floyd carried on dominating the charts as if nothing had happened. They were always a cut above, less ‘prog’ and more space rock, crafting dark excursions into madness and wounded humanity with their deeply affecting cosmic swirl of immersive synths, jazzy percussion, and shattering solos.
Rather than letting punk destroy them, Pink Floyd embraced its nihilist insurgency, releasing the angsty Animals and closing the decade with their defining double-LP ode to alienation The Wall.
There are four eras to Pink Floyd. Founded in London in 1965, original songwriter and creative captain Syd Barrett crafted a more eccentric end of psychedelia that shone with Anglo-surrealism on cuts like ‘Bike’ and ‘Arnold Layne’, before his sad departure due to mental health issues in 1968. What followed was the post-Barrett chapter of variable albums and soundtracks that feature gems among the floundering experiments such as Ummagumma.
1973’s The Dark Side of the Moon kicks off their golden age, also overseeing frontman Roger Waters’ consolidation of creative control and sowing the seeds of future disaffection. Once Waters had officially called it quits in 1985, so began the David Gilmour-led chapter, a set-up that continues to this day which Waters bitterly fought legally.
When wrestling into Pink Floyd’s rich discography to pluck out their worst single, it helps to consider which era it’s likely to be lurking. We can safely disregard the golden era, which boasts one of the finest run of albums in popular music.
Their 1967 The Piper at the Gates of Dawn debut is fantastic in its own right albeit virtually a different band, and its orbiting stand-alone singles inventive pop hits of the day. The post-Barrett output is mushy in quality but doesn’t actually offer many singles, and counts ‘Careful With That Axe, Eugene’ in its ranks which makes up for their early-’70s feet-finding.
Sorry Dave, but we’re gonna have to choose a cut from the Gilmour-fronted incarnation of Pink Floyd. It feels a bit harsh to choose 2022’s ‘Hey Hey Rise Up’, a tasteful and admirable collaboration with BoomBox’s Andriy Khlyvnyuk as a solidarity gesture to those affected by Russia’s warmongering and proceeds donated to the Ukraine Humanitarian Relief Fund, despite its surface lyricism. 2014’s The Endless River is their worst album by a country mile, but its sole single ‘Louder than Words’ displays a fleeting touch on the celestial magic the group could conjure when on good form.
There’s no question where we end up, shifting aside 1994’s not-bad The Division Bell and sifting through 1987’s soggy digital dross and tepid songwriting that stinks up A Momentary Lapse of Reason. Lacking the acerbic bite and complex view of humanity that enriched Waters’ lyricism and snarled delivery, Gilmour’s too gentle a soul to captain the Pink Floyd ship and we end up with glossy commercial slop like ‘One Slip’, originally a B-side to album’s lead single ‘Learning to Fly’ and not possessing the good sense to leave it that way.
‘One Slip’ illustrates starkly the telling absence of ideas on Floyd’s first post-Waters LP, a stuffy and cumbersome pretence of grandiosity that still offers nothing in the way of stirring or memorable, lapsing into the grandiloquence that befell their lesser peers years before. Waters must’ve laughed, a flash of schadenfreude as he released the infinitely more interesting Radio KAOS album and its innovative live show.
