“Comfortably Numb” by Pink Floyd

"Comfortably Numb" turns up deep inside The Wall, Pink Floyd's 1979 album, and got its own single release in 1980 with "Hey You" on the flip. Roger Waters wrote the words out of a real night in 1977, when he was shot full of tranquilisers before going onstage, and David Gilmour wrote the music. They split the vocal, too: Waters takes the verses in a flat, weary murmur, and Gilmour glides in on the chorus like a man floating clear of his own body.

They fought over it. Waters wanted an orchestra, Gilmour wanted it lean, and the finished track, produced by Bob Ezrin with the two of them and co-produced by James Guthrie, jams both ideas together: an orchestral swell rising behind Nick Mason's slow-motion thud and Richard Wright's organ, and two Gilmour guitar solos cutting through the haze like searchlights. The second one is the kind of thing that makes grown men play air guitar at red lights.

Gilmour later called it the last time he and Waters managed to work together constructively, which makes that chorus sound a little like a farewell. In 2021 Rolling Stone put it at 179 among the greatest songs ever.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.