PINK FLOYD:

Pink Floyd is the premier space rock band. Since the mid-'60s, their music relentlessly tinkered with electronics and all manner of special effects to push pop formats to their outer limits. At the same time they wrestled with lyrical themes and concepts of such massive scale that their music has taken on almost classical, operatic quality, in both sound and words.

The group landed a recording contract with EMI in early 1967 and made the Top 20 with a brilliant debut single, "Arnold Layne." The follow-up, the kaleidoscopic "See Emily Play," made the Top Ten. The debut album, “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn,” also released in 1967, may have been the greatest British psychedelic album other than Sgt. Pepper's. Nothing, however, prepared Pink Floyd or their audience for the massive mainstream success of their 1973 album, Dark Side of the Moon, which made their brand of cosmic rock even more approachable with state-of-the-art production; more focused songwriting; an army of well-time stereophonic sound effects; and touches of saxophone and soulful female backup vocals.

Dark Side of the Moon finally broke Pink Floyd as superstars in the United States, where it made number one. It was also an extremely hard act to follow, although the follow-up, Wish You Were Here (1975), also made number one. Pink Floyd's lyrical and musical vision was consolidated by The Wall (1979). The bleak, overambitious double concept album concerned itself with the material and emotional walls modern humans build around themselves for survival. The Wall was a huge success (even by Pink Floyd's standards).