Ranking Pink Floyd’s 10 Longest Songs

Any look back at Pink Floyd‘s longest songs ends up as something of a love letter to the lost musical partnership of David Gilmour and Richard Wright, the latter of whom died in 2008.

Pink Floyd’s songs tended to become shorter and more novelistic as their erstwhile bandmate Roger Waters‘ influence grew. Earlier, much longer tracks often turned into a showcase of Gilmour and Wright’s style, gumption and kinship. These bold explorations stretched into Gilmour’s post-band solo albums and tours. Curiously, however, Gilmour has always insisted that Pink Floyd wasn’t a prog band.

“We didn’t talk about style, and I’ve never talked about progressive rock, or thought that we were – whatever – progressive rock,” Gilmour argued in 2025. “To me, progressive rock is very, very serious players who can really do their stuff. I think we were doing it long before the term progressive rock, and I think I was probably a grumpy old man in my 20s. You know, sort of, ‘Nah, that’s not us.'”

READ MORE: Ranking Every Pink Floyd Live Album

The following ranking of Pink Floyd’s 10 longest songs stretches from 1968’s A Saucerful of Secrets, the group’s first album with Gilmour as original frontman Syd Barrett exited the lineup, through 1977’s Animals when Pink Floyd’s albums were becoming vehicles for Waters’ outsized concepts. By then, Wright was already losing creative sway. After one more album, 1979’s The Wall, Waters pushed out his fellow co-founding member.

Remembering Pink Floyd’s Longest Songs

Of course, Pink Floyd released some notable songs that simply weren’t lengthy enough to make this list. They include the band-written instrumental “Interstellar Overdrive” (9:41) from 1967’s The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, the live version of “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun” (9:21) from 1969’s Ummagumma, “Sorrow” (8:47) from 1987’s A Momentary Lapse of Reason and “High Hopes” (8:31) from 1994’s The Division Bell.

Then there’s “Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast,” from 1970’s Atom Heart Mother. Despite stretching out over 13 minutes with three movements (“Rise and Shine,” “Sunny Side Up” and “Morning Glory”), alas, this is not a song. Roadie Alan Styles literally just cooks a morning meal.

Highlights of Pink Floyd’s Classic Era

Wright wouldn’t come back until Waters himself had split from Pink Floyd, reuniting with Gilmour and Nick Mason after they jumpstarted the group again for A Momentary Lapse of Reason. Wright also appeared on Pink Floyd’s The Division Bell and 2014’s posthumous Endless River, as well as a pair of Gilmour’s live projects (2007’s Remember That Night and 2008’s Live in Gdansk) before he died at age 65 after a bout with lung cancer.

The bulk of Gilmour and Wright’s musical legacy, however, will always be the songs from Pink Floyd’s classic era over roughly a decade between the late-’60s through the late-’70s. And many of those moments came on some very long songs. Here’s a ranked look at the 10 best:

No. 10. “Sysyphus (Parts 1-IV)”
From: Ummagumma (1969)
Time: 13:32

Pink Floyd wasn’t quick to discover a direction after Syd Barrett’s sudden departure. On their second recording without him, they settled on the idea of presenting a bunch of solo material — and that only served to illustrate the concept of a sum being still far greater than its parts. David Gilmour later admitted he “just bulls—ted” through his piece. As Richard Wright’s meandering four-part 13-and-a-half-minute “Sysyphus” certainly shows, they all did.

 

No. 9. “Atom Heart Mother”
From: Atom Heart Mother (1970)
Time: 23:44

This still-transitional LP included collaborations with a brass section and choir, paired with Pink Floyd’s weirdest improvisational moment, the musique concrete experiment “Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast.” As with the preceding Ummagumma, Atom Heart Mother also ended with a series of solo compositions. It was a decidedly unfocused era best summed up by an unwieldy six-part title track that took up all of side one. Nick Mason and Roger Waters played the entire 23-minute rhythm figure in one sitting, while the rest of Pink Floyd and orchestral arranger Ron Geesin pasted all manner of sounds on top.

Titled Movements:
I. “Father’s Shout” (2:50)
II. “Breast Milky” (2:33)
III. “Mother Fore” (4:50)
IV. “Funky Dung” (5:15)
V. “Mind Your Throats Please” (2:30)
VI. “Remergence” (5:46)

 

No. 10. “The Narrow Way (Parts I-III)”
From: Ummagumma (1969)
Time: 12:14

Gilmour’s “The Narrow Way, Parts 1-3” indulges in some of the weird studio gimmickry and out-there glissandos that helped solidify Pink Floyd’s position among so-called space rockers – an idea underscored elsewhere with songs like “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun” and, later, with The Dark Side of the Moon. “The space thing was a joke,” Waters countered in Rolling Stone. “None of those pieces were about outer space. They were about inner space. That’s all it’s ever been about – human beings and their insides, whether it was Syd’s writing or mine. They were both about the same thing.”

 

No. 7. “Sheep”
From: Animals (1977)
Time: 10:20

Waters found lyrical inspiration for this narrative from a violent 1976 confrontation between the police and youth in the Notting Hill neighborhood of west London. Originally a largely instrumental track titled “Raving and Drooling,” “Sheep” was retooled to provide “my sense of what was to come down … with the riots in England,” he once said. Waters later told Mojo that “‘Sheep’ does have that idea of revolution, of people being led to slaughter.” Things were also changing in Pink Floyd as Waters stepped to the fore, but there was still space for a glistening turn by Wright that eventually becomes completely entangled with Gilmour.

 

No. 6. “A Saucerful of Secrets”
From: A Saucerful of Secrets (1968)
Time: 11:57

A pivotal moment. Gilmour arrives as Waters takes his initial tentative steps toward longer-form composition. The first two segments are said to reflect a pitched battle, while the third deals with war’s aftermath and the final part finds space to mourn the dead. Meanwhile, Gilmour is already revealing an utterly uninhibited imagination, placing his guitar on the floor and then using an unscrewed mic stand bracket as a sort of e-bow. “‘A Saucerful of Secrets’ … gave us our direction forward,” Gilmour told Guitar World. “If you take ‘A Saucerful of Secrets,’ ‘Atom Heart Mother’ and ‘Echoes’ – all lead logically to Dark Side of the Moon.”

Titled Movements:
I. “Something Else” (3:57)
II. “Syncopated Pandemonium” (3:07)
III. “Storm Signal” (1:34)
IV. “Celestial Voices” (3:19)

 

No. 5. “Pigs (Three Different Ones)”
From: Animals (1977)
Time: 11:28

Roger Waters used this album to refocus Animal Farm-style criticisms of Stalinism toward capitalism, with pigs as ruthless ideologues, dogs as greedy predators and sheep as mindless followers. At least one of the pigs represented a self-appointed member of the U.K. mortality police at the time, while many felt the others represented various politicians. Either way, Pink Floyd was transforming from a collective effort into a vehicle for Waters’ narratives, with Animals as the fulcrum. The song pushes past its heavy subject matter with a surging bass line played not by Waters but by David Gilmour, who also adds gravelly talk-box.

 

No. 4. “Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts VI–IX)”
From: Wish You Were Here (1975)
Time: 12:24

The conclusion of a nine-part composition isn’t quite as focused as the first, and Richard Wright takes full advantage of the space. The subject of the song, troubled former frontman Syd Barrett, ends up taking a backseat to his lengthy turns on the mini-Moog. “Without his quiet touch,” Gilmour later admitted, “the album Wish You Were Here would not quite have worked.” Along the way, Wright adds a Solina String Ensemble Synthesizer and Hohner Clavinet as Gilmour extends slide explorations from the title track – and Pink Floyd’s last truly collaborative project is made complete.

 

No. 3. “Echoes”
From: Meddle (1971)
Time: 23:30

After a few years of simply noodling around, Pink Floyd finally constructed a 23-minute triumph of a song that’s simply filled with instrumental wonders. Not least of them is Wright’s surging organ solo, which was said to have been inspired by the Beach Boys‘ “Good Vibrations.” “Echoes” also stands as a testament to the strange magic that happened when Wright and Gilmour shared a microphone. “The blend of his and my voices and our musical telepathy,” Gilmour said during a eulogy for Wright, “reached their first major flowering in 1971 on ‘Echoes.'”

 

No. 2. “Dogs”
From: Animals (1977)
Time: 17:04

Like “Sheep,” “Dogs” was updated from an existing song. They’d even played “You’ve Got to Be Crazy” in concert before setting it aside to focus on Wish You Were Here. Back then, it simply had too many words and was occasionally played too fast. Changes to that approach added new portent to song that ends with the image of a metaphorical stone dragging down a gluttonous businessman. Working for the first time in their own studio, rather than in a more structured environment like Abbey Road, Pink Floyd was also free to add a few nifty touches. For instance, barking canines on this track morph into a keyboard solo by Wright.

 

No. 1. “Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts I–V)”
From: Wish You Were Here (1975)
Time: 13:33

Gilmour played this song’s opening four notes during a rehearsal, catching Waters’ attention. The phrase “had the feeling of something calling, some night creature if you like, calling in a lonely sort of way out of the darkness,” Gilmour later remembered. They perhaps inevitably thought of Barrett, who’d been a childhood friend of Gilmour’s before initially leading Pink Floyd. The first song started for this LP would become the last completed, as the group continued tinkering with their long-form masterpiece. That led to moments of miniature genius like saxist Dick Parry exchanging a baritone for a tenor as the time signature switched.

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