“Welcome to the Machine” by Pink Floyd

"Welcome to the Machine" is the cold, mechanical heart of Pink Floyd's 1975 album Wish You Were Here, and Roger Waters, who wrote it, first called it "The Machine Song". On the original vinyl it slides in out of the opening parts of "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" and shuts down side one, and it sounds like the inside of a factory: a pulsing throb from an EMS VCS 3 synthesizer fed through a single echo, stacked with more synthesizers from Waters and Richard Wright, Wright's Minimoog and Hammond, tape effects and heavily treated vocals.

David Gilmour sings lead and strums 12-string and acoustic guitars, Nick Mason rumbles on timpani and cymbal, and Venetta Fields and Carlena Williams add backing voices. One line sat too high for Gilmour, so the band slowed the tape down half a semitone, let him sing it lower, then brought the speed back up.

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