Quote Originally Posted by chaim View Post
I consider myself a huge Waters fan, but IMO The Wall is overrated. It was a wonderful personal statement from Roger and I appreciate it if someone has really listened to it and genuinely gets something out of it. I know that - lyrically - it's the kind of narrative that must touch some people. But I think it's rather weak musically. So I'm pretty sure that there are tons of people who have learned to love it ("Everyone says it's amazing, so of course it's amazing"). And there must be tons of people who love Another Brick part II and Comfortably Numb and therefore think they love The Wall.

Personally I get much more out of The Final Cut. And that has been my personal experience, no one has decided it for me.
There’s a lot I can say about The Wall. For starters, it is probably my fourth favourite Pink Floyd album, behind Wish You Were Here, Dark Side and Animals (I think those albums have the perfect balance of lyrics and music). I personally can’t understand where people who say Wish You Were Here is overrated are coming from, whereas I can sympathise more with The Wall. It is a polarising album – some people love it, some people hate it. I don’t listen to the full album as often as I listen to my top three Floyd albums or Meddle. One reason is that is because I think it is best appreciated as a full record listened to from start to finish (whereas with say Physical Graffiti I often listen to the two discs separately) and it is less easy to find time to do this with a double album. It is also quite an intense experience – it is not a ‘sunny day’ album in the way that an album like the warm, mellow Atom Heart Mother is and I would loathe to ruin it for myself by overplaying it. I once read that the best music is not necessarily the music you listen to most often. I’m not sure I completely agree with that, but I think it applies in this case.

One weakness of the album is that I don’t think it ends as strongly as its three predecessors – where Dark Side has the cinematic Eclipse, Wish You Were Here has Rick Wright’s beautiful funeral march and Animals has the great outro of Sheep and the soothing second half of Pigs On The Wing. The collapse of the wall at the end of The Trial, although essential to the storyline, is not as satisfying a ‘moment’ as those three album endings. I absolutely love the lyrics to Outside The Wall, but I’m not crazy about the original arrangement – I much prefer the version played in the 1980-81 The Wall shows.

Having said all that though, The Wall is an album that means a lot to me. It was the first CD album I ever bought for myself in my first year at university. I remember going back to my room to listen to it that evening to listen to the full album and being transfixed by it. Over the last couple of years I have spent quite a lot of time alone on train journeys between home and university. This is roughly a three hour journey and in winter this is entirely in darkness. Much of this is through rural areas with little lighting and nothing to see, leaving me reliant on my music and/or reading material for amusement. I have played many albums on these trips and there are few better travel companions than The Wall, which keeps me greatly entertained for a huge chunk of the journey. Above all, I think it is a hugely emotional album, with so many hugely memorable songs and moments on the album. I love Waters’ berserk rage on One Of My Turns and the vivid lyrics of Nobody Home as much as I love the cathartic guitar solos of Hey You and Mother. There are songs that are despairing, like Don’t Leave Me Now, but I believe the overall message of the album is a positive one. I can understand your comment on the music, as there are a couple of musical themes that appear quite frequently (most notably the 'Another Brick' riff) and there are relatively few memorable keyboard parts. To counterbalance this though, I think David Gilmour was on top form as a guitarist - he doesn't have that many big solos, but there isn't any 'noodling' on The Wall, the guitar parts all seem very focused and powerful to me. I remember a quote from Roger around this time period where he said 'we make a great team', and I think he was right.

I must admit I was once one of the people who thought they loved The Wall because I loved those two songs – Comfortably Numb was the first song that got me into Pink Floyd in the first place four years or ago, and it has always been my favourite from the album. However, as I listened to more of the songs I found I love most of them too (and the few that I can take or leave as songs I think are essential to the story). I also love all of the references to earlier Floyd songs, many of which are lost on the ‘we don’t need no education’ fans. I think it is the more emotional songs that make it so great, the ones that really capture the bad moments, the desperation and the frustration, which is why I think Another Brick Part 2 is somewhat overrated (while, conversely, I think Another Brick Part 1 is a quietly brilliant piece which doesn’t get enough praise). My final word is that I think the part of me that loves The Wall is closely linked to the part of me that loves Desperado – they both follow the stories of young men who shut themselves off from the world to follow their dreams but are not truly happy or satisfied with their lives or with the people they actually are behind the bravado. That's my take, anyway.

I'm quite glad you mentioned this as it made me start to think about overrated/overplayed albums as well as individual songs. Having thought about it a bit, I started to wonder whether I would consider The Piper at the Gates of Dawn to be overrated. I guess on balance I would probably say that it is. I enjoy it when I listen to it, and it does contain my favourite pre-Meddle song (Astronomy Domine) but I don’t like it as much as I like A Saucerful of Secrets. I don’t tend to think of it is as ‘overrated’ because it has more of a cult appeal to Syd devotees and certain critics – it isn’t as widely praised as the big 1970s Floyd albums, and the songs definitely receive less airplay.