Let's Rank All The Pink Floyd Albums!

Yep let’s do this. And here’s the deal - we’re going to try to minimize the mythology here and just judge the music as much as possible, so get out of your feelings and let’s consider one of the more incredible bodies of work of all time.

Granted, I reserve the right to a few feelings since it’s MY snobbery, and yes you’ll have your chance to come at me in the comments. I welcome it (and you’d do it even if I didn’t).

I did not get to see the Floyd with Syd Barrett or Roger Waters. But I did see them on the Division Bell tour in 1994 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium on one of the craziest weekends I ever had. I’ve also seen Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets and I did see a solo Roger Waters show before he revealed himself to be a TOTAL piece of shit. I wouldn’t go see him now. And that show wasn’t very good anyway - it was like seeing a competent cover band that happened to have Roger Waters in it.

Meanwhile this is going to be very difficult - so much evolution in this band and my favorites don’t match up necessarily with the stuff that I would argue is their “best,” so this could eschew conventional wisdom on several levels. I usually present my lists as the definitive final word (this IS a snobbery after all), but I’ll allow that this list might just be A list, and not necessarily THE list. I’ll also point out that’s it’s very early in this piece. Like, who are we kidding - there’s certainly a chance I’ll decide it’s THE list by the time I’m done writing it. Hehe….

Let’s Rank All The Pink Floyd Albums!

Let’s get to it. Studio albums - no best-of collections or live releases.

15. The Final Cut (1983) I often forget this album exists. Don’t bother unless you REALLY love self-indulgent narcissism by an asshole who takes full control of a great band and turns it into his therapy session / manifesto against the war in the Falklands. And that may be a little harsh but this is completely a Roger Waters vehicle and not in a good way. Not Now John is kind of the exception and Gilmour gets to sing on it. The end. Sorry not sorry - this is barely “Pink Floyd.”

14. Ummagumma (1969) We’re talking about the studio album here - the live part of the double album is fantastic, the studio LP is…..not exactly. It’s definitely interesting in a few spots, with each member getting a quarter of the album for their own compositions. Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict is endlessly fascinating as an avant garde slab of madness by Waters and Grantchester Meadows is pretty. The Narrow Way (part 3) is an interesting nugget of early Gilmour, but way too much of this album is unlistenable garbage.

13. The Endless River (2014) Yes I do have this above The Final Cut and Ummagumma - for the Roger Waters fans still reading who are triggered by this, too bad. I actually enjoy The Endless River quite a bit. It would be higher except it’s not REALLY a proper Pink Floyd “album.” Consisting of a bunch of extra music they recorded during The Division Bell sessions, it sounds much like that album and mostly an instrumental companion piece. But seeing as Division Bell is one of my favorite albums of all time, this release is a gift. And remarkably, it plays like a Pink Floyd album that works on its own merits in terms of its flow. David Gilmour and Nick Mason worked on this one after Rick Wright’s passing and added lyrics to the final track Louder Than Words which works as a great Floyd song.

12. More (1969) The slightly lesser of the two soundtracks they were commissioned to do and the first album after Syd’s departure. My own theory is that this gave them something to do and focus on during a still-transitional period (I’ll admit I haven’t read every book and consumed every story and myth that’s ever been written about Pink Floyd, but I know enough to be dangerous and I’ve spent a ton of time with their music). And there are some gems here like the rocking The Nile Song, the pretty Cymbaline, the soothing Crying Song along with Green Is The Colour and Ibiza Bar which are both pretty good. But it’s still early, not completely focused, much of it is just mildly interesting soundtrack music (Up The Khyber, Main Theme, More Blues, Quicksilver) and I don’t listen to it that much at all, really.

Pink Floyd - A Saucerful of Secrets Columbia

11. A Saucerful of Secrets (1968) I think there’s a bit of a drop off from the debut as there was some drama with Syd starting to lose it, and he’s barely involved with this album. So it’s a bit of a sophomore slump although Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun is very cool and the sprawling title track has a few moments. The album starts with a pretty cool riff on Let There Be More Light even though it doesn’t show up again for the rest of the song for some weird reason. And that’s kind of the vibe as a whole - some good ideas, not fully realized. Frankly this is the general rule for all Floyd up until Meddle - it’s hit or miss. Some of it is groundbreaking, some of it is dated, some of it is great, some of it is fun, some of it sucks.

10. Atom Heart Mother (1970) This is an endless debate in my house since both of my kids (well at least one of them for sure) are obsessed with this album. I don’t think it’s great. But I say that in relative terms. In the debate of does it fit into the upper tier of Floyd albums I say absolutely no way. In the overall ranking and in the debate of whether it’s very good at all I say yes there is some good material here even if their reach still exceeded their grasp in this attempt at a grandiose statement that just falls short. The massive instrumental title track is too self-indulgent. The horns have always felt out of place and that annoying operatic chanting….ugh. About a third of the way through we actually get some cool lead guitar / keyboard interplay between Gilmour and Wright that shows a glimpse of modern Floyd - cool bass line and Mason on that steady cymbal. It just doesn’t last long enough before more out of place chanting and overdramatic horns return. The best two tracks here are If and Fat Old Sun. Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast has some nice instrumental parts.

Pink Floyd - A Momentary Lapse Of Reason EMI

9. A Momentary Lapse of Reason (1987) This album may suffer from too much new-age sheen, but the re-release on The Later Years box set strips some of that away and the album benefits greatly from it. And this is the first album on this list that contains more than one truly worthy classic in Learning To Fly and On The Turning Away. One Slip and The Dogs of War are both really good as well, and Sorrow is solid enough but doesn’t truly distinguish itself. A welcome return and beginning of the final phase of the band without Roger Waters who was NOT happy that the other three decided to continue using the name.

Pink Floyd - The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn EMI

8. The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn (1967) It’s hard for me to know where to put this one. It’s a mix of the peak early Floyd with the spacey psychedelics like the classic Astronomy Domine and the whimsical very-British Syd material like Bike, Flaming, and The Gnome - which I love. I’m a big fan of the Yardbirds-ish Lucifer Sam as well, but this is not the same Pink Floyd you have become accustomed to if you grew up with Dark Side and The Wall. Now if there are people reading this in their 70’s and older who were there at the beginning and this was what Pink Floyd originally was for them, I offer my respect. But I say if you discovered them on their 70’s music and then backtracked to the early stuff and you say this is your favorite because it’s Syd, I say you’re lying. The problem is that much of their psychedelic 60’s output just sounds….dumb now. Interstellar Overdrive may have been groundbreaking at the time but it’s mostly unlistenable today, and tracks like Pow R. Toc H. and Take Up Thy Stethoscope and Walk just sound like throwaway noodling.

7. Obscured By Clouds (1972) To me this is where we start getting closer to the truly premium Floyd. Obscured By Clouds is the album that kind of gets overlooked as another soundtrack in between towering masterpieces Meddle and Dark Side, but it’s soooooo good. You know it right away with the menacing and pulsing title instrumental, and When You’re In gives a kick ass 1-2 instrumental punch to open the album. Not everything here is top notch but none of it is bad - for the first time. Gold, It’s In The… is a solid rocker and Wot’s…Uh The Deal is a pretty tune with Gilmour turning in a fine vocal. Childhood’s End is a precursor to Time on Dark Side - they’re starting to figure it out here. Free Four is great, and we hear Waters starting to find his voice a little bit here as well just in terms of vocal styling / storytelling. Rick Wright’s Stay might be his best Floyd contribution in terms of writing the music and providing the lead vocal, and a song that deserves to be much better known.

6. Meddle (1971) The blueprint for everything that came after. This is the album where 70’s Floyd first kicks in musically and leaves behind the weird meandering experimental crap. Okay almost, since there is a lot of weirdness in the middle of the mammoth Echoes, but weirdness is fine if it serves a purpose and it’s…..good. The funny thing is this album doesn’t necessarily sound like the others, but it does sound like a band that has hit its stride. The opener One Of These Days doesn’t really sound like any other Floyd song but man does it hit hard - especially live. I saw it live on 5/27/94 in Cleveland, I saw Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets play it on 10/7/22 in Royal Oak, and I saw Brit Floyd play it. That bass line - holy moly. I love every song on Meddle. A Pillow of Winds is exactly as the title suggests and you can just float away listening to it - just a sweet mellow tune. Fearless is one of my favorite Floyd songs of all time. I kinda don’t get the soccer crowd singing You’ll Never Walk Alone intruding on the song a bit, but it’s a minor complaint. That lifting riff and the beautiful Gilmour vocal is just outstanding. I love the jazzy shuffle and understated piano of San Tropez and yes, I enjoy the laid back novelty Seamus. Seamus - that’s the dog. The one howling along. Steve Marriott’s dog to be exact lol. Haters piss off. Hehe…. As for Echoes - wow. Could have easily been released as a bookended part one and two to start and finish the album, clocking in at 23:29 and another triumph for Wright who wrote most of the music and provides a co-lead vocal with Gilmour. Waters wrote the lyrics. The echo-ey interlude of strange sounds takes me back to listening to this on a nighttime drive in Israel from Jerusalem to Masada to climb it to watch the sunrise from the top back in 1994. I have this distinct memory of winding our way downward during that segment - just what’s in my memory. One of those times where music can evoke - can take you back to a point in time in a visceral way. The 4 minute instrumental jam from the 7 minute mark to about 11:15 is everything.

5. The Division Bell (1994) Fight me. Not backing down on this to any haters - just getting that out of the way. The Division Bell is incredible. It’s such a great document of a mature, assured unit distanced from the lawsuits and Roger’s bullshit which is partly why it’s a major improvement over Momentary Lapse. Nick Mason, Rick Wright and David Gilmour make for a great Pink Floyd lineup. I feel like these are the stable members of the outfit. Okay maybe Rick Wright wasn’t always completely stable, but this feels like a truly unified group for the first time since Animals or The Wall at best (even though they were far from unified in reality at that time) and it comes through in the songwriting, performances and feel. It may not have the sweeping conceptual scope that Waters brought to the proceedings (in masterful fashion to his credit on a few occasions), but that stuff is NOT missed here at all. I grew up on some Floyd with my brothers being in high school in the 70’s as a kid, but this album was the first Pink Floyd album that came out while I was an adult and I was fully hyped and ready for it. So it takes me back to that year in Cleveland in a visceral way and I even remember purchasing it in Mayfield Heights, OH. I saw this tour as I mentioned and this album was also a part of that Israel trip - especially the Amsterdam leg of the travel. So this album means a ton to me. Of the instrumental intros on later Pink Floyd / David Gilmour albums, Cluster One is by far my favorite and sets the tone for an album packed with great songs. The only non-essential track here is the still-pretty-good instrumental Marooned. It just doesn’t really add anything. But man…. What Do You Want From Me, Poles Apart, Take It Back, Coming Back To Life and Keep Talking are as good as it gets. Gilmour in peak form with gorgeous melodies, killer guitar solos, that soothing voice - all of it. And Rick Wright is back pretty much fully into the fold here with some incredible keyboards especially on Keep Talking, and he gets a lead vocal for the first time since Dark Side on the pleasant Wearing The Inside Out. I also love the production throughout. It gives it just enough of a majestic feel while still feeling organic. The closer is High Hopes which has an epic sweep that I understand but it’s not my favorite on the album. I think not being a HUGE fan of that song puts me in the minority but what can I say - I still like it. I wish this lineup would have made at least one more new album (even though Endless River helped scratch the itch).

4. Animals (1977) Animals takes the structure of Wish You Were Here and inverts it - a two part track to begin and end with, but Pigs On The Wing Parts One & Two are the brief intro and coda that bookend the sprawling epics this time. And they are both perfect for this album. There are only 5 tracks on this album so other than the two-part Pigs on the Wing there are only three other songs but don’t let that fool you - this is really where the band pushes their prog limits with songs in multiple parts that go 17:07, 11:27 and 10:17. I go back and forth on this one as I seem to hear some people say this is their best. I think people say that to sound a bit contrarian because the other stuff has been played to death. FM radio won’t play songs that are this long or this short and there is nothing in between here, so Pink Floyd was one of the biggest bands in the world and this album wasn’t on the radio - still isn’t. So much has been said about these albums at this point in the list that I can really only add my personal perspective which is that while a bit of a chore, this album is still one I return to relatively often. There are some interludes that drag a little, but the musicianship overall is kick ass, and the biting and ultra cynical lyrics about capitalism and society as a whole are really good. “You gotta be trusted by the people that you lie to, so that when they turn their backs on you you’ll get the chance to put the knife in.” Well put Roger - at least in a corporate context which I can certainly relate to. This is also the album where Roger starts to really take over the band. No writing credit at all for Richard Wright and Waters provides most of the lead vocals too. The real beginning of the end for the band as a team.

3. The Wall (1979) I believe the top three on this list are interchangeable. They are not only the three best Pink Floyd albums but three of the best ever in rock history, and would be enough on their own to solidify this band as one of the greats. The Wall and the accompanying film are a real accomplishment as a story with multiple metaphors that all work at genius level. The crowning achievement for Roger Waters in that respect for my money. Credit where credit is due. Rick Wright was kind of on his way out at this point but while Roger provides the overall concepts, the storyline and much of the creative juice, this is still as much Gilmour’s album as it is Roger’s because of his performances. His voice and his guitar are era-defining with the soaring chorus and soloing in Comfortably Numb - so simultaneously beautiful and sad. There aren’t many moments in rock history like it. The same can be said for Mother, not to mention its brilliant time signature change. The subject matter is so heavy - the mental deterioration of the protagonist “Pink” (Syd) played brilliantly in the movie by Bob Geldof. Childhood nightmares, the horrors of war, the walls that separate mankind, the wall that the band put up between them and their audience on the tour, the building of a wall in one’s mind to close off from the world in a march to madness… The irony here is that as heavy and tough as these topics are to consider, the brilliance with which The Wall mines them almost gets ruined with the very existence of a rock album as the vehicle. The Wall almost makes the consideration of these things worse as classic rock stations feed the meathead rocker’s urge to pump his fist from the cheap seats of a stadium and yell “Hey! Teacher! Leave those kids alone!” in his own dumb anthem adoption of sticking it to the man that the average dumbass doesn’t even understand as he pounds Miller Lites. The same idiots that Roger Waters spit on during the last show of the Animals tour because they annoyed him so much, and were the inspiration for building a wall between the band and the audience for this tour. But for those who get it and can stay with the narrative it’s still really rewarding. Okay and yeah, sure - it’s killer classic rock - that Another Brick in The Wall Pt. 2 is one of the best pure rock solos of all time which any self respecting rocker can air guitar and sing every single note of. Okay maybe I’ve digressed a LITTLE but I think it’s a relevant discussion…. Meanwhile there are no shortage of legendary tracks here such as Young Lust, Hey You, & Run Like Hell and for good reason - these are some of their best, but I’m often drawn to Goodbye Blue Sky, One Of My Turns and Nobody Home - the first of which being one of the most sublime tunes I’ve ever heard by a rock band. I guess musically I’ve got this at three because some of the theatrical stuff like the reprise of In The Flesh on the second disc, Stop, The Trial, Outside The Wall - they might put the finish on the story but they are not all that enjoyable to listen to.

2. Wish You Were Here (1975) Those first four notes of Shine On You Crazy Diamond are incredible. How you could create such a feeling, such a narrative, such possibility with 4 simple notes like that is something to behold. It just hooks, soothes, and expands your mind. Another album about Syd who actually showed up unannounced for a visit to the studio while the band was recording the album. So much of the band’s material is about Syd, and in this case going all in on a stunning tribute in the 26 minute Shine On You Crazy Diamond. What an epic and there’s no doubt I haven’t listened to parts VI-IX enough which come on the back end of the album, with parts I-V opening the proceedings. The latter half is a JAM - am I the only one who sometimes forgets how cool the section is about halfway through? Is that Part VIII that starts at the 6:00 mark? Does anyone know for sure? Used to be you could look at the vinyl and depending on the album there would be a visible groove that you could see for the separation of parts of a suite but I don’t know that I’ve ever owned this album on vinyl or if they pressed it that way. Either way it’s all great, and of course you’ve got the dual standards of Wish You Were Here and Have A Cigar with Welcome To The Machine in between. I’m not AS big of a fan of Welcome To The Machine as the others but it’s still great.

Pink Floyd - The Dark Side Of The Moon EMI

1. Dark Side Of The Moon (1973) I don’t know if this is my “favorite” Pink Floyd album. It’s next to impossible to decide, but I think it has to be atop the ranking. It was such a huge leap forward and along with Wish You Were Here represents the true peak of the creative bell curve for this band. It’s one of those albums that contains everything great about this band and it’s a singular statement that few others have accomplished. I also never get sick of it no matter how many thousands of times I hear it. I’m also saying here that Money is the best song here and the 7/4 time signature is really insane - who writes that? The sax solo going into the 4/4 shift for the solo - like these guys were just RIPPING it. They never quite jammed like this before - and what a showcase for Nick Mason. Holy crap - one of the most underrated drummers in rock history. You never see him on any lists which is ridiculous. The bass line carries the main riff while in 7/4 which has to be one of Roger Waters’ finest moments musically. All 4 members really shine throughout this album. Us And Them is the last great Rick Wright showcase musically (he wrote the music and sang the harmonies to Gilmour’s lead) and sometimes I forget the extended jamming of Any Colour You Like on the end of it - seems to catch me off guard each and every time I listen to it. Conceptually the themes are the same that they return to on the next 3 albums - the human condition, mental illness (Syd), greed, war and the like. The first line is a welcome to come along on the journey, and this album is indeed a journey. “Breathe. Breathe in the air. Don’t be afraid to care.” This is different. This is cerebral and challenging music in the very best way. A truly perfect album with a genius at the controls in Alan Parsons as sound engineer. I love that there’s plenty of room for meticulously crafted music AND loose jamming here. The brilliant kaleidescope chase of On The Run > the chimes of Time is one of the sequences that sets this album apart. Breathtaking. An auditory FEAST for the senses that should be listened to in the dark if you haven’t before (or at a laser show set to The Wizard Of Oz visually of course). Brain Damage and Eclipse serve as the worthy big finish and you’re left completely satisfied that you’ve been treated to a masterpiece for the ages.

M10 Social is owned by Doug Cohen in West Bloomfield, MI and provides social media training and digital marketing services from the Frameable Faces Photography studio Doug owns with his wife Ally. He can be reached there at tel:248-790-7317, by mobile at tel:248-346-4121 or via email at mailto:doug@frameablefaces.com. You can follow Doug’s band Vintage Playboy at their Facebook page here. You can also visit our other business Detroit Jerky at the website www.DetroitJerkyLLC.com! Also please visit Doug’s other media company Hail Media for all kinds of Michigan content - podcasts and shows about the Wolverines!

Music ListsDoug CohenMay 2, 2026M10 SocialPink Floyd, Syd Barrett, Roger Waters, David Gilmour, Richard Wright, Nick Mason, Music Lists, Music Blog, Music, Rock Music, Doug Cohen, M10 Social, Doug's Music Snobbery, The Dark Side Of The MoonComment