Roger Waters says only one Pink Floyd single is ‘significant’ compared to solo career

Pink Floyd bassist and songwriter Roger Waters has claimed just one song by the progressive rock band is “significant”.

Waters, who suggested a song from his debut solo album, The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking is one of his two most important songs, says the only other song is a Pink Floyd classic. Waters did clarify that he was referring to songs he had written with Pink Floyd, though considering he wrote most of the songs with the band after the departure of Syd Barrett, it’s quite a damning look at the band’s history. Asked about which of the band’s songs would be the only song to live up to the high expectations set by his debut album’s title track, Waters said a track from The Dark Side of the Moon had proven impactful. The rest of the singles released by the band were not impactful, the bassist claimed.

Speaking back in 1987, Waters took a pop at his former band, which he had left in 1985. His last work with the band, The Final Cut, would be released in 1983. When being interviewed for his first solo album, Waters took the opportunity to take a swipe at his former bandmates and suggested they hadn’t done anything of note, with or without him, since the mid-1970s.

He was asked: “When was the last time you had a single out? It must have been Another Brick in the Wall.” Waters replied: “No, it was the Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking. And the only other significant single in my career was Money from The Dark Side of the Moon. That was the only other one that made any impact at all.”

The veteran songwriter went on to claim it was “uncool” for bands to release singles and that he only relented because he had gotten old. He added: “It was very uncool. That’s why we wouldn’t do it. But we all get older.”

Pink Floyd would only occasionally release singles. Money was packaged with Any Colour You Like in 1973. It was followed up with the release of Us and Them and Time in 1974. A year later, Have a Cigar and Welcome to the Machine were released. Pink Floyd did not see any singles chart positioning until the release of Another Brick in the Wall (Part II) and One of My Turns. The song has since been registered as platinum and topped the charts in the UK, Canada, and the United States.

Waters would not receive the same success as he would when in Pink Floyd, though he appeared ready to deal with such a change in fortune. He said in the same interview: “Yes, but it’s a concern I try to resist. But I confess that I harbour a fantasy that there might be enough in my writing – because my writing is so passive – that has something to do with some sort of group unconscious that I might make another record that would appeal to millions. I always feel it is a kind of extraordinary coincidence that it happened twice with Pink Floyd, with The Dark Side Of The Moon and The Wall.”