The five Pink Floyd albums every fan should own on vinyl
Throughout their five-decade run as a recording act, Pink Floyd released 15 studio albums. What this extraordinary catalogue lacked in consistency, it made up for in an insatiable thirst for sonic exploration and reinvention. The band’s history has been chaptered by several factors, but none more decisive than its shifting captaincy.
After forming in the mid-1960s as a run-of-the-mill rhythm and blues band, Pink Floyd cut away from the pack to join a smaller number of London groups heading up the psychedelic rock wave. In 1967, the early singles ‘Arnold Layne’ and ‘See Emily Play’ introduced early bandleader Syd Barrett’s songwriting nuances in the run-up to The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.
Sadly, Barrett struggled with ongoing mental health issues and was forced to leave Roger Waters at the helm in 1968, with his old school friend David Gilmour filling in on guitar. This marked the beginning of Pink Floyd’s prog-rock transition that eventually led to a golden age of seminal releases.
For the closing years of Pink Floyd’s history, the band continued without Waters, with Gilmour taking the reins amid bitter legal disputes. This period threw up some essential moments of music but mirrored the inconsistencies of the band’s transitional period in the late 1960s.
I often find lists like these rather difficult, but deciding Pink Floyd’s five most essential records was a breeze. As a big fan of the band, I would take the lot for my record shelf, but the five selections below give a good flavour of Pink Floyd at different chapters during their first and most important two decades. The only albums I felt a little sorry for leaving out were Obscured By Clouds and Animals.
Five Pink Floyd albums:
The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (1967)
The list would seem incomplete without Pink Floyd’s psychedelic era debut album. Although founding bandleader Syd Barrett contributed to A Saucerful of Secrets, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn was his most consummate and enduring contribution to the band’s legacy. Sadly, Barrett missed out on Pink Floyd’s most successful run through the 1970s, but his influence shone on in the band’s impressively evolutionary catalogue.
A far cry from the prog-rock sound Pink Floyd nurtured through the 1970s with David Gilmour on the strings, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn is mysterious and kaleidoscopic. Throughout, Barrett reminds us of his lyrical idiosyncrasies that are at times cheeky, at others downright bizarre, but always entertaining.
Meddle (1971)
Barrett’s early psychedelic sound entered a chrysalis in 1968 as Roger Waters honed his songwriting skills and the band adapted to Gilmour’s favoured guitar style of spacious, affecting solos. The four-piece gelled in improvisational jam sessions that threw out the oddities heard in Ummagumma and Atom Heart Mother.
The transitional albums of the late 1960s lacked consistency, but Pink Floyd seemed to find their footing in 1971. Meddle is often eclipsed by subsequent releases, but it deserves a place among the band’s finest records. The Side Two epic ‘Echoes’ is the obvious attraction, but ‘One of These Days’ is also worthy of mention as the first step in a sonic direction mastered in The Dark Side of the Moon.
The Dark Side of the Moon (1973)
I imagine I might have been hung, drawn and quartered were this seminal masterpiece not to feature on the list. The Dark Side of the Moon is Roger Waters’ first fully-fledged concept album, dealing with the major themes of life, including time, money, mortality and mental illness. Brimming with existential anxiety, it’s certainly no dance record, but within its category, no finer album has been made.
Waters’ songwriting command seemed to strike its zenith just as the band reached optimal chemistry. Highlight moments include Richard Wright’s arresting piano composition in ‘The Great Gig in the Sky’ and Gilmour’s symphonious lead excursions in ‘Time’. However, its beauty is best admired holistically on vinyl.
Wish You Were Here (1975)
Where on Earth does one go after putting out a masterpiece like The Dark Side of the Moon? Pink Floyd maintained form through the mid-1970s with this impressive flourish. In a bid to keep their sound fresh, the band mixed things up by bookending the album with two epic halves of ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond’, a breathtaking ode to Syd Barrett. We also hear Roy Harper take lead vocals as a guest on ‘Have a Cigar’.
After offering some blistering guitar work to ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts I–V)’, Gilmour takes lead vocals in the desperate and intense ‘Welcome to the Machine’. However, his greatest lyrical contributions arrive in the side two classic ‘Wish You Were Here’, which remains one of Pink Floyd’s flagship tracks.
The Wall (1979)
This one’s a little more pricey, but you get bang for your buck in a double album of almost exactly 80 minutes. The Wall is sometimes dismissed as a Waters vanity project, but if it is, it’s certainly a good one. As we realised a decade prior with The Beatles’ “White” album, double LP releases can sometimes feel stagnant, packed with lacklustre filler. As a clinically executed conceptual album, The Wall dodges this pitfall.
The rock opera is deeply reflective on Waters’ life, but the character, Pink, is also loosely based on Syd Barrett. The album is home to gentle highlights like ‘Nobody Home’, hard hitters like ‘Young Lust’ and the hit singles ‘Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2’ and ‘Comfortably Numb’, the latter containing one of Gilmour’s finest solos.
