Review #129: The Wall, Pink Floyd

Karla Clifton
3 min readJul 6, 2021

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#129: The Wall, Pink Floyd

You may have noticed that since my epic road trip ended, there’s less of a narrative to these reviews. I took fewer notes after that. And there’s something about driving that makes music so much more memorable.

To combat the loss of my handy plot device, I listened frantically to 78 new entries over the month of January, not counting the ones I was listening to for the second time. For perspective, I only listened to 25 new albums in February. (Do you ever bite off more than you can chew?)

I didn’t do much other than consume music like a madwoman for that first month, not really taking note of what experiences in my life were framing these albums. But right around here, I began taking notes in earnest of what I was doing when I listened to these albums for the first time.

It looks like these notes will shed meaningful light on my understanding of the music. For example, for this album, I wrote down: “I listened to this while I was washing the dishes, but my dishwasher was broken, so I had to wash them in my bathroom sink.” Ah, yes, the universal experience of washing dishes in your bathroom sink to Pink Floyd.

FAVORITE SONGS:

“Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 1” — My favorite thing about this instrumental is that it forced one of Pink Floyd’s most radio-friendly songs to be a “Pt. 2” song.

“The Happiest Days Of Our Lives” — Short and weird.

“Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 2” — If we don’t need no education, we don’t need no thought control, how come I’m shelling out so much money for grad school?

“Mother” — Imagine your mom saying Mama’s gonna make all of your nightmares come true.

“Young Lust” — LOL — the part at the end of this song where a telephone operator admits that the protagonist’s wife is having an affair is real! Well, they really did trick a phone operator into thinking he’d caught someone in an affair.

“Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 3” — This one makes me nervous.

“Hey You” — This song’s lyrics page on Genius proves that Pink Floyd fans are pretty nuts.

“Is There Anybody Out There?”Dark Side is beautiful, The Wall is scary.

“Bring the Boys Back Home” — Every Brit band needs one (1) song that sounds a little like a salute to the Queen.

“Comfortably Numb” — Roger Waters wrote this song about getting injected with tranquilizers before playing a show.

“The Show Must Go On” — Knowing this album is about how sick they were of touring makes this song kind of sad.

“In The Flesh” — Oh wow. This is a concept album and the story gets pretty dark — well, long before now, but especially now.

“Waiting for the Worms” — No spoilers but I just read Dune IV: God Emperor of Dune, and I think we’re ALL waiting for the Worm.

“The Trial” — Pink Floyd is the most dramatic band in the world.

LEAST FAVORITE SONGS:

“Don’t Leave Me Now” — Slow piano ballad with warbly voice.

“Goodbye Cruel World” — Scary song title, boring song.

“Vera” — Oh, buddy, your voice.

IS RS FULL OF IT?

Pink Floyd are kind of like the Beatles; overrated but brilliant.

Review #128: A Night At The Opera, Queen

Review #129: 1999, Prince

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