Spinoff of earlier thread: PF DSOTM vs WYWH vs The Wall vs Animals

Animals


Why? Because I like it the best


P.S. why did you leave off all their other records?

This thread won't go far with that title. You should change it to say "Pink Floyd" somewhere. It's too many initials

Dark Side of the Moon. It was their first album that featured songs not constructed with extended instrumentals with almost trance inducing intent. The song lyrics were constructed around a theme, things that make you mad, that was accessible to a mainstream audience. The production was brilliant with the layering of sounds. It was a ground breaking album that was like nothing before it.

Piper at the Gates of Dawn, if we can choose any Floyd album. that record is delightfully unhinged. The rest of their stuff is about other people who went crazy, Piper is about going crazy from the inside point of view.

If limited to those four, I want to say Wish You Were Here, but Shine On You Crazy diamond does not need to be twenty minutes and on both sides of the record. That's ridiculously self-indulgent, and the song can't support that runtime. It drags like hell. If it were a five-minute song and it was a short LP or just an EP, it would be my fave. But otherwise, Dark Side.

Because of the 15 Pink Floyd studio albums, those 4, particularly, as considered the primary body of work for the band, possibly excluding Piper and Meddle. Piper was all Syd, from a composition standpoint. From A Saucerful of Secrets, through Meddle (and, really, Obscured by Clouds is a converted film soundtrack) - they were in their more psychedelic period. Of those, only Meddle was double platinum. So, for lack of a better term, the traditional "classic" period of Pink Floyd runs from DSOTM through The Wall. The Final Cut, was for all practical purposes, a Roger Waters album with Gilmour and Mason serving, effectively, as highly paid session musicians - and the crass calculation was made that another Floyd album would sell better than a Waters solo album.

After that, no more Roger Waters. (And I like both The Final Cut and Momentary Lapse of Reason.)

So, that's why those 4 and I understand the OP's decision to make this debate about those. There are hardcore Floyd fans of the pre-DSOTM records, but they constitute a minority I would think. Most people came to Floyd fandom sometime between Meddle and The Wall. That's just the fact of it.

quote:

---

And Meddle is such a classic that one could be forgiven for including it with these 4.

---

I agree and it is certainly the 5th or 6th for consideration (Piper being the other potential for inclusion, but, again, being so different, all Syd compositions, etc.) Meddle is arguably the album that broke Floyd as a commercially successful album rock band. It is probably rightly considered the transition album from Floyd of the 1960s and Floyd of the 1970s.

It just wasn't the monster that DSOTM or The Wall was, and was not the work of art that WYWH or Animals was, IMHO.

That's a pretty good rationale actually.



Still, none of these four have the great Lucifer Sam on them