{"id":733468,"date":"2026-01-31T17:23:14","date_gmt":"2026-01-31T17:23:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/733468\/"},"modified":"2026-01-31T17:23:14","modified_gmt":"2026-01-31T17:23:14","slug":"the-pink-floyd-album-david-gilmour-thinks-stands-above-the-rest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/733468\/","title":{"rendered":"The Pink Floyd album David Gilmour thinks stands above the rest"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Pink<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Pink Floyd)<\/p>\n

Sat 31 January 2026 15:06, UK <\/p>\n

Not many can claim to have reached the artistic heights that Pink Floyd leader and guitarist David Gilmour<\/a> has. Gilmour has numerous masterpieces to his name and many moments confirming why he is one of the most influential musicians of all time. Whether it be niche junctures from the band\u2019s early days or the cerebral ambient compositions from their final chapter, Gilmour is an incredibly accomplished creative force.<\/p>\n

The two most eminent bodies of work in Gilmour\u2019s Pink Floyd oeuvre are 1973\u2019s\u00a0The Dark Side of the Moon\u00a0and\u00a01975\u2019s\u00a0Wish You Were Here<\/a>. While the mainstream hails the former as the band\u2019s crowning achievement, its follow-up is considered by many fans to be their magnum opus, with it a more refined and subtle offering than its predecessor. Nevertheless, there\u2019s very little that truthfully separates them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

According to David Gilmour, though, he sides with the fans on this one. When speaking to Classic Rock in 2002, he revealed his criticisms of The Dark Side of the Moon and reflected on constructing Wish You Were Here. Due to him pushing the band to take more care creatively on the 1975 album because of the lessons learned making its forebear, he thinks that it is their \u201cmost complete album\u201d.<\/p>\n

Gilmour said: \u201cI had some criticisms of\u00a0Dark Side of the Moon. It\u2019s kind of ludicrous in a way to have criticisms of an album that was so successful, but I did voice them at the time. I thought that one or two of the vehicles carrying the idea were not as strong as the ideas that they carried.\u201d<\/p>\n

Obviously, artists are always their own worst critics, but Gilmour did seem to be on to something. Pink Floyd\u2019s skill was always the existential theories that lay behind some of their songs, and the guitarist clearly felt that some tunes weren\u2019t built to hold such weighty ideas. He continued, \u201cI thought we should try and work harder on marrying the idea and the vehicle that carried it so that they both had an equal magic, or whatever, to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The fmaous \u2018Wish You Were Here\u2019 album cover. (Credit: Pink Floyd)<\/p>\n

Gilmour would be sure, as the next album came around, that he wouldn\u2019t fall under a similar strain. \u201cSo it\u2019s something I was personally pushing when we made\u00a0Wish You Were Here,\u201dm hex aplined. But the album certainly didn\u2019t get the widespread attention the previous record did, not that it seemed to undercut Gilmour\u2019s appreciation for the LP, \u201cIt\u2019s underrated by some, but not by me. I think it\u2019s our most complete album.\u201d<\/p>\n

Following this, it was put to Gilmour that his former songwriting partner and now archnemesis, Roger Waters<\/a>, had recently said Wish You Were Here was as much about mourning the loss of the group as a band of brothers as it was their original frontman, Syd Barrett. <\/p>\n

Asked to give his thoughts on this point, Gilmour said: \u201cMaybe in mourning the band, not as a band of brothers, I don\u2019t think, but more in terms of a band of seekers, if you like. We were people dedicated to hunting down and playing something with meaning and soul. The period after Dark Side of the Moon, when we made Wish You Were Here, was a strange time. We had achieved everything, really, that one could hope to achieve. There was a bit of distance between us all at that point, and Roger wasn\u2019t the only one who noticed this sense of absence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gilmour concluded: \u201cBut that sense of absence is part of the album\u2019s magic. It helped create it. I don\u2019t know quite how it did it. I can\u2019t regret that period at all. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s necessary for that absence, that feeling of post-euphoria\u2026 I don\u2019t see it as something permanent. You maybe suffer a little dip in some ways, but little dips in life can inspire great things. It\u2019s odd to try and work out how something as good as that album came out of this rather blank feeling that we had.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though Wish You Were Here is often thought of as the signal of Pink Floyd\u2019s eventual demise, the album is also one of their finest creations. It\u2019s a record that saw Gilmour and Waters at loggerheads, but somehow, the music didn\u2019t suffer one single bit.<\/p>\n

It may have even propelled the LP into a new space and launched it creatively. The record can be considered one of their best and perhaps one of the greatest albums of the century as it influenced millions of people. Noted by both Waters and Gilmour as their favourite Floyd album, the record is the distillation of what made Pink Floyd so brilliant.<\/p>\n

Listen to Wish You Were Here below.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Pink Floyd) Sat 31 January 2026 15:06, UK Not many can claim to have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":733469,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3936],"tags":[44623,77,269,26420,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-733468","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-david-gilmour","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-pink-floyd","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115990875837504139","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=733468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733468\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/733469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=733468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=733468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=733468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}