Today we have one of the most famous songs by the English rock band Pink Floyd, and one of the most popular on classic rock radio stations – Wish You Were Here. It’s really a staple of the contemporary music canon and is often found on greatest-of-all-time rock song lists, as well as among the top three of Pink Floyd’s output. Even Gilmour and Waters have praised the song as one of Pink Floyd’s finest.
Wish You Were Here, the title track from Pink Floyd’s 1975 album, along with the album’s opening song, Shine On You Crazy Diamond, Comfortably Numb (1979), and Learning to Fly (1987), are my personal favourites from one of rock music’s pioneering groups, particularly when it came to creating atmospheric music.
Wish You Were Here is more of a rock ballad than a rock song per se, with its slow, reflective tempo and acoustic guitar-led arrangement. I imagine Wish You Were Here would have inspired many wannabe guitarists to pick up a guitar and start playing. Its simple and instantly recognisable acoustic guitar opening makes it one of those songs that a beginner can have a go at without too much difficulty.
The interplay between beauty and dark allegory throughout lends the song a wide-open, almost spatial sense of longing. After all the time that has passed and all that has transpired, the chorus exudes a profound sense of absence and loss, and the desire to be reconnected with that which is no longer here: How I wish, how I wish you were here.
Snippets from the Wikipedia article below:
Guitarist/vocalist David Gilmour and bassist/vocalist Roger Waters collaborated in writing the music, with Gilmour singing lead vocals.
Waters, who mainly wrote the lyrics complementing Gilmour’s initial riff idea and subsequent joint composition, describes the lyrics as being directed at himself. Gilmour, on the other hand, recognises that he never performs the song without remembering Syd Barrett.
Waters has noted that the collaboration between himself and Gilmour on the song was “really good. All bits of it are really, really good. I’m very happy about it.”
He (Gilmour) performed the intro on a twelve-string guitar, processed to sound like it was playing through an AM radio, and then overdubbed a fuller-sounding acoustic guitar solo. This passage was mixed to sound as though a guitarist were listening to the radio and playing along. As the acoustic part becomes more complex, the “radio broadcast” fades away and Gilmour’s voice enters, while the rest of the band joins in.
[Verse 1: David Gilmour]
So, so you think you can tell
Heaven from Hell? Blue skies from pain?
Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil? Do you think you can tell?
[Verse 2: David Gilmour]
Did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees? Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change? Did you exchange
A walk-on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?
[Chorus: David Gilmour]
How I wish, how I wish you were here
We’re just two lost souls swimming in a fishbowl, year after year
Running over the same old ground, what have we found?
The same old fears, wish you were here
References:
1. Wish You Were Here (Pink Floyd song) – Wikipedia
“The more I live, the more I learn. The more I learn, the more I realize, the less I know.”- Michel Legrand
Observation Blogger 
I love this song. I think, like with “Shine on You Crazy Diamond”, this is for Syd Barrett. But maybe I’m wrong. It just seems to fit.
‘Waters, who mainly wrote the lyrics complementing Gilmour’s initial riff idea and subsequent joint composition, describes the lyrics as being directed at himself. Gilmour, on the other hand, recognises that he never performs the song without remembering Syd Barrett.’
This was my first Floyd album. I have such affection for it still.