The Wall by Pink Floyd

This is the 11th studio album from English rock band Pink Floyd released November 30, 1979. The first time I’ve heard of Pink Floyd’s music is from the “Darkside of the Moon” which was released six years earlier. The album was extravagant in many different ways and appeared on the rankings for the greatest albums of all time. For instance, Rolling Stone listed the record number 35 on its top 100 albums of the last 20 years. I thoroughly enjoyed the album. The only song I did not appreciate was “Us and Them”, mainly because of the length. But suggested by my friend Ethan to do a review on this 11th studio album “The Wall”, I found that this album was underwhelming in the fourth part of the album but it was an overall cohesive work of art. Some songs that I thoroughly appreciated were “Don’t Leave Me Now”, “Is There Anybody Out There?”, “Nobody Home”, and “Comfortably Numb”. This album was created after the “In the Flesh Tour” which the group did not enjoy. So, to work on this album they were presented with two new ideas for concept albums. They went through some financial difficulties but completed the album’s 26 tracks. The album itself was produced with a lot of thought as you can hear many different contributions to the sound design. For instance, there were phone calls, television broadcasts, and many other sounds. The first song and second song include a baby crying. Overall the album plays as a graphic rock album where Pink, the main character in the album, is isolated from society symbolizing the wall. The album presents this concept very well. My favorite track is “Don’t Leave Me Now” where it first presents ambience and the lead singer Roger Waters singing about Pink lashing out to his adulterous wife by threatening her and begging her to come back. The song then bursts into a grandiose rock chorus with epic proportions. The fourth side of the album is just out of place… The music in this section does not match with the music for the rest of the album turning from rock opera to a live performance. Overall, “The Wall” became a very commercially successful rock album that has won several awards.