Pink Floyd
The Wall

THE REVIEW

The Wall, 1979.

What is The Wall?
The Wall is Roger Waters' outpouring, developed between the loss of his father during World War II and the deterioration of his friend Syd Barrett during his brief period of fame.
The Wall should not be considered exclusively as an album but is a work that found in music the best channel to express the fears, difficulties, and limitations of an artist who, after spitting on a fan in Montreal, realizes that a kind of wall has now arisen that hinders communication and understanding of feelings with his audience but generally with other people. It should be remembered that The Wall in 1982 came out as a film naturally, the entire soundtrack of the film was the songs from the album, but the film opened with the beautiful "When the tigers broke free" (not present on the album) where Roger shows his disdain for war by recounting the scenario of his father's death that occurred at Anzio and the pain he feels for never having seen him.

Musically speaking, The Wall is not the pinnacle of Pink Floyd, also because the real Pink Floyd are no longer there. In fact, in this album, almost all the songs were written by Waters, except for three written with Gilmour, one of which is the poignant Comfortably Numb, which was a song discarded from Gilmour's solo album and then adapted for The Wall with the contribution of Waters; there is also a song written by Ezrin.
Even regarding the music, there is Waters' dominance. It should be noted that Wright appears as a session man while Mason's name never appears on the album. Therefore, the album can be defined as a Roger Waters album with arrangements by Pink Floyd, who for years now have set aside psychedelic rock and the crazy yet exciting suites to give free rein to Waters' always melancholic lyrics in remembrance of his father, texts that deal with the mood of a rock star caught up in problems and fears and always forced to continue the show.
In my opinion, the album is exceptional because the songs, to be truly appreciated, must be heard in the context of the album and not individually; an example could be "the thin ice": this song begins with a baby's cry that emerges out of nowhere after the noise created by a warplane. It is these small details that make this album so touching, not to mention the scream of "Comfortably numb," which blends perfectly with the song, the helicopter that has become a symbol of Pink Floyd as sound engineers, all of this makes an outpouring a great musical but also social work.

A piece of advice I can give is to listen to The Wall in its entirety with the translations of the lyrics beside you because only in this way will you realize the genius of Roger Waters.