Exploring an Artist’s Connection with the Hearts of its Audience

Pink Floyd

It is difficult to think of a band more widely loved and frenzied over than Pink Floyd. Its persistence on being the favorite musical group of listeners across generations is nothing short of a miracle. Sure, The Beatles were famous in the 60s, but how many Spotify Wrapped lists did they top in 2022? Not too many. That’s not the case with Pink Floyd, however. This one group’s popularity seems to never quite diminish. What makes their music so enduring? How did they carve out such a lasting place in the hearts of their audience? 

The answer to this question, in my opinion, can be boiled down to two things- first, the great profundity of simplicity and blank space in art; second, a perfect balance between the lyrics and the music. Let me explain. 

Pink Floyd is made up of David Gilmour on lead guitar and vocals, Richard Wright on keyboards, Nick Mason on drums, and Roger Waters as the bassist and conceptual author. If we think about their technical proficiency on the instruments, they are by no means the best in the world. There are far more outrageously accomplished instrumentalists out there. But what the members of Pink Floyd understand the best is how to serve the concept of a song. Each member contributes exactly what the song needs to blossom into a work of art. They know what not to play, how to leave spaces between guitar phrases, between melodic passages, and between the shifting dynamics within the music. In my many years of being a music aficionado, I have found that it is within these spaces that the listeners of the Floyd find themselves residing. They find ample room to tuck themselves inside the song’s universe. None of the musicians overplay their hands and the message of the songs flows out across the listener’s consciousness unobscured, clear like the autumn sky. 

The relationship of mutual exaltation between Roger Waters’s lyrics and the band’s compositions is another reason that makes Pink Floyd so relatable. Waters does not write his lyrics in high poetry. He is not Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen and will never be considered for a Nobel prize in literature, no. Roger Waters speaks the common tongue. He talks like you and me. He talks about you and me. He sings what we cannot say out loud. He writes about the crazy diamonds lurking among us, about bidding goodbye to the blue sky, the bricks that we are in this wall of life, about time, money, wishing someone was here, about us and them. And the music serves as the background score to the sentiments that the lyrics elicit within our souls. It’s all in perfect balance, in perfect harmony. It is so clear and simple and has a such profound depth that the audience listens with their souls instead of their ears. 

I feel like this is what art should strive to be. An extension of the connoisseur himself. It should be easy to get lost in. That’s why Pink Floyd’s music will survive the never-ending test of time. People find it so easy to lose themselves in it and always will. 

Name: Faheem Bin Faruk

Id: 22201219

Section: 20