To put a twist on the usual album review, I decided to write about a classic album: the 1979 album “The Wall” by the English progressive rock band Pink Floyd.

Although this album follows the usual story-telling form of Pink Floyd, this album is unique from other Pink Floyd LPs. Its stories focus more in-depth, even providing characters through the album.

The album’s music follows the protagonist Pink, who suffers from various traumas occurring in his physically and emotionally abusive childhood, while dealing with other traumatic occurrences through his adulthood. All the while he is dealing with fame and popularity because Pink is a rock star. As his traumas continue, Pink eventually seeks complete isolation, hiding behind a metaphorical wall, leading to insanity and eventual rejoice in humanity.

The album is not only an achievement in storytelling; it is an achievement in music itself. Pink Floyd is well known for their distinctive style in music making, their albums frequently featuring music that runs together to further add to the storytelling effect in their albums. Also, their albums regularly feature sound effects between tracks or in the middle of their songs. “The Wall” is no exception to their innovative style, as its music runs together, changing tone and speed to symbolize change in emotion or thinking. The album also features a variety of sound effects, including spoken dialogue between the characters themselves, and various noises. This ranges from the sound of a plan crash to symbolize the death of the main character’s father, who died during a war, to the sound of a television, to demonstrate the main character’s fall into complete isolation.

Through their unique storytelling and highly stylized music, Pink Floyd is able to create an extremely vivid picture of the band’s own struggles with fame.

The album makes various allusions to one of the founding members of Pink Floyd, Syd Barrett, whose excessive drug use and mental illness caused him to leave the band. The album draws an intimate picture of Barrett, focusing on his self-destructiveness and retreat from people. However, the album also contains autobiographical elements from the band’s stance on fame at the time they created the album.

Roger Waters, who was the main songwriter for the album, became excessively critical of Pink Floyd’s fans before the band started working on the album. Waters was so disgusted by them that he wished to build a wall that would separate them from the audience. This idea eventually became the ideological foundation for the album, as it explores the relationship between a music group and its fans. Waters’ extreme view of his fans can be seen in the album, as one song describes the main character’s wish to have all of the members of an audience killed during a performance.

With its autobiographical themes and innovations in story telling and music, Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” is definitely a classic album worth listening to.