I’m limited to 20 options, but only 15 studio albums for Floyd
If this remains popular, I’m going to do some other discographies.
So I have 4 favorite groups. Pink Floyd, Yes, Led Zep and The Beatles. I started with the most obscure one by far. Yes.
Hard to choose, as there are songs on all of them that I love, but Great Gig in the Sky narrowly beats out One of These Days, so I gotta go with Dark Side.
If you’d put the Pulse concert as an option, even though it’s not technically an album, I’d have gone with that.
I never thought of them as obscure, heard them on the radio all the time growing up.
Best for me at sixteen was The Wall. Best for me at twenty-five was Dark Side. Best for me at thirty was Piper. Now, I’m back to liking The Wall again. But then, I still like Piper, so I’ll go with that.
Hard to choose, but overall, I think “Meddle” is the best. I got it when it first came out and still love it. It helped that I saw them live when they were touring with it.
Yes is obscure compared to 3 of the biggest bands of all time. The Who and The Rolling Stones I guess to round biggest bands of all time with Floyd, Zep & Beatles.
It was a hard decision. At one point in the mid 80’s I had a single 90 minute cassette tape in my car that had “The Dark Side of the Moon” on one side and “Wish You Were Here” on the other side. For months I just kept flipping the tape over when it got to the end of one side.
For me, I feel the emotion of “Wish You Were Here” a little more, so it gets the nod. It’s funny that it’s so good because that album was made at one of the most challenging times in the band’s time together.
I voted for Dark Side. But really, I think there are 4 albums by them I really love equally. My Tetralogy of Floyd: Dark Side, Wish You Were Here, Animals, and The Wall,
I had that tape twice. The first one wore out. So damn good.
I use to use the tape to go to sleep to in the Navy. Tales from Topographic Oceans by Yes was another frequent choice.
I love Floyd, The Final Cut the least of the pre-breakup stuff. Momentary Lapse of Reason the most of the Gilmore led Floyd.
Add Meddle to Dark Side, Wish You Were Here, Animals, and The Wall and I’m right there with you QtM.
I voted “wish you were here” but those 4 are also my top 4, with “obscured by clouds” in at number 5 (I think “stay” is a little bit of genius in a band simply swimming in it)
You charged us with setting our own criteria. The one I went with ignores auditory burnout and concentrates on how I experienced the album on first hearing it, and Dark Side just can’t be beat. But I hardly ever listen to it any more because I don’t hear it when I do, I’ve heard it so many times my ears don’t react. I’d say Animals and The Wall in a very close competition for 2nd place with Piper at the Gates of Dawn just barely behind.
The post-Wall stuff all brings up the hind end, with there being one album I’ve actually never bothered to listen to (Endless River) and the rest containing at best a couple tracks worth listening to on occasion.
Man, I still have all the 60s and 70s Floyd on vinyl. It’s a close call, but Wish You Were Here wins for me. I have a lot of positive memories associated with it from high school, and still listen to it sometimes at night.
Also, Rick Wright ending the whole album by playing those notes from “See Emily Play” (“soon after dark, Emily cries”) really still gets to me.
This is almost word for word what I was thinking of posting, except I’m too dumb to use a word like ‘Tetralogy’
The Wall was my first exposure to Floyd, bought the album when it first came out. Loved the epic and enigmatic themes that run through it.
Then I quickly got into Dark Side and it was my favorite album, Floyd or otherwise, for a long time. It seems like almost too obvious of a choice for this poll, though.
"Animals’ is a masterpiece of angry sarcasm. “Wish You Were Here” has two of the best takedowns of the music industry, “Have a Cigar” and “Welcome to the Machine”.
So I’m not sure what I will choose in the poll just yet. Maybe ‘The Final Cut’ just to give it some love-- I think it’s a very underrated Floyd album (really a Roger Waters solo backed by the rest of the band, despite it ‘officially’ being a Floyd album). It may as well have been titled “The Wall Part II”, having continued the themes of Waters’ alienation from his father and the disillusionment of the postwar dream.
I could have gone with Meddle, especially as Echoes might slightly shade the first side of Atom Heart Mother. However the second side of AHM is flawless, whereas some parts of the first side of Meddle are a bit meh for me. On the third hand I could just as happily gone for WYWH or PATGoD.
Long time Floyd fan, started at 11 with the Wall, got all their LPs plus live albums and compilations up to 1987 on vinyl (still have them). I’m also a Meddle guy. Sure DSotM and Wish You Were Here are flawless masterpieces, and Meddle has two fillers with “Seamus” and “St. Tropez”, but the rest has so many excellent moments that I like Meddle the best. “Fearless” and “One Of These Days” are two of my favorite Floyd songs.
I’ve listened to SEP and that ending millions of times and never noticed this. I wouldn’t have felt that convinced but the high very last note does seem to confirm it. Anyway, this led me to this video which I’d never seen before. It gives a great insight into what Syd was like when he was well. I think the mimed cricket game is a riff on the mimed tennis game in Blow Up.
I think DSotM is a landmark album that nobody has ever duplicated except the group itself, but I’m burned out on it. I happened to listen this very week to Animals and Wish You Were Here after not listening for a long time and I was blown away by them. The beginning of “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” stuns. Those albums are the peak of a genre of their own that they started creating earlier. Only The Beatles are also truly a genre of their own.
Which is why I didn’t vote in the poll. Sometimes there is one best; sometimes best is spread across a career. There’s no one best Beatles album either.
