Pink Floyd’s best album has long been a topic of debate for fans and critics alike. But if you were to ask David Gilmour, there is only one Pink Floyd album he prefers over the rest. And as is often the case when it comes to a musician’s favorite work, it was not the album that received the best commercial reception upon its release.
According to Gilmour, Pink Floyd’s ninth studio album is the lone relic from his time with the iconic psych-rock band that he can listen to with pleasure.
David Gilmour Preferred This Pink Floyd Album
Whatever musical success Pink Floyd believed they had achieved prior to 1973, their concept of fame flew out the window after they released Dark Side of the Moon. Suddenly, Pink Floyd went from a regional psychedelic craze to international stardom. Dark Side of the Moon is the band’s best-selling record by far, but it wasn’t David Gilmour’s favorite by any means.
In a 1993 interview with Guitar World, Gilmour said he preferred Wish You Were Here over Dark Side of the Moon. The guitarist said the former release was “the most satisfying album. I really love it. I’d rather listen to that than Dark Side of the Moon. We achieved a better balance of music and lyrics on Wish You Were Here. Dark Side went a bit too far the other way—too much importance of the lyrics.”
Pink Floyd released Wish You Were Here two years after Dark Side, and much of the album centers around the negative effects of fame, both within the remaining members of the band and as a tribute to Syd Barrett, a founding member of Pink Floyd who left the band years earlier due to a mental breakdown. “It’s about the feeling we were left with at the end of Dark Side,” Gilmour told Guitar World. “That feeling of, ‘what do you do when you’ve done everything?’”
The Musician Has Also Spoken Highly of an Earlier Record
Throughout his decades-long career, countless reporters have asked David Gilmour what his favorite Pink Floyd album or song was—due in no small part to the differing opinions between himself and his estranged bandmate, bassist and vocalist Roger Waters. For the most part, Gilmour has consistently cited Wish You Were Here as his favorite.
But in a 1988 Australian radio interview, Gilmour revealed another favorite Pink Floyd record—and no, it still wasn’t Dark Side. This time, Gilmour mentioned Meddle, a Pink Floyd album from 1971 that featured tracks like “San Tropez” and “Fearless.” Gilmour said of the release: “Meddle is amongst my favorites. That, to me, is the start of the path forward for Pink Floyd, really” (via Far Out Magazine).
“We got the record right, we got the cover right, the whole package, you know,” Gilmour continued. “The whole thing was very good—recording the songs, the lyrics, the idea. The whole thing was a very powerful package. We knew before we finished it that it was definitely going to do a lot better than anything we’d done before.”
Photo by Giuseppe Lami/Ansa/Shutterstock
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