WISH YOU WERE HERE

In my humble opinion Wish you were here is overrated, it's a fantastic album and one Pink Floyd's finest however I just don't see enough substance in it to justify calling it one of, if not the greatest prog album of all time.

'Shine on you crazy diamond' is a majestic song - truly a masterpiece I love every minute of it, probably Pink Floyd's greatest song and one of the best songs going round to be honest, it's just the rest of the album that lets me down. I find 'welcome to the machine' to be on the whole boring and to be honest quite abrasive (being a death metal fan I don't say that lightly either). 'Have a cigar' likewise bores me, it's easily the weakest song on the album and is quite a generic floyd song, it sounds like it belongs on the wall with the whole generic classic rock bluesy thing, don't get me wrong it's not an entirely bad song but it's not a really interesting one either. Wish you were here is a great pop song however in the context of a progressive rock album it's filler, it really doesn't belong.

In summary 'shine on you crazy diamond' is what this album is about for me, the other 3 songs aren't particularly progressive or interesting in comparison they are fairly straight forward rock songs, not to say they are bad but in relative terms however this is prog archives and I feel I should be judging this album on it's progressive merits. 4 stars mainly because 'shine on you crazy diamond' takes up most of the time on this album.