pink floyd the wall album comfortably numb what album

As much as this story tips toward nihilistic victimhood, there also runs a strong existentialist countercurrent in which freedom cannot be separated from personal responsibility. Now shackled to his bricks, Pink watches helplessly (or perhaps fantasizes) as his fragmented psyche coalesces into the very dictatorial persona that antagonized the world during World War II, scarred his nation, killed his father, and, in essence, affected his life from birth. Yet the minute it’s complete, the gravity of his life’s choices sets in.

As his wall nears completion – each brick further closing him off from the rest of the world – Pink spirals into a veritable Wonderland of insanity. Every incident that causes Pink pain is yet another brick in his ever-growing wall: a fatherless childhood, a domineering mother, an out-of-touch education system bent on producing compliant cogs in the societal wheel, a government that treats its citizens like chess pieces, the superficiality of stardom, an estranged marriage, even the very drugs he turns to in order to find release. Born during the final throes of a war that claimed the lives of nearly 300,000 British soldiers – Pink’s father among them – to an overprotective mother who lavishes equal measures of love and phobia onto her son, Pink begins to build a mental wall between himself and the rest of the world so that he can live in a constant, alienated equilibrium free from life’s emotional troubles. Since the studio album’s release in 1979, the tour of 1980-81, and the subsequent movie of 1982, the Wall has become synonymous with, if not the very definition of, the term “concept album.” Aurally explosive on record, astoundingly complex on stage, and visually dynamic on the screen, the Wall traces the life of the fictional protagonist, Pink Floyd, from his boyhood days in post-World-War-II England to his self-imposed isolation as a world-renowned rock star, leading to a climax that is as cathartic as it is destructive.įrom the outset, Pink’s life revolves around an abyss of loss and isolation. Ink Floyd’s the Wall is one of the most intriguing and imaginative albums in the history of rock music.

Pink floyd the wall album comfortably numb what album