"Comfortably Numb" is a song by the English rock band Pink Floyd, which first appears on the 1979 double album, The Wall. It was also released as a single in the same year with "Hey You" as the B-side. It is one of only three songs on the album for which writing credits are shared between Roger Waters and David Gilmour. The melody and most of the music was written by Gilmour while Waters contributed the lyrics and some additional notes. The song had the working title of "The Doctor".
The song is one of Pink Floyd's most famous, and is renowned especially for its guitar solos. In 2004, the song was ranked number 314 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. In 2005, it was the last song ever to be performed by Waters, Gilmour, Wright, and Mason together. In 2011, the song was ranked 5th in the BBC Radio 4's listeners' Desert Island Discs choices.
Read more about Comfortably Numb: History, Composition, Plot, Guitar Solos, Live Performances, Cover Versions, Personnel
Famous quotes containing the words comfortably and/or numb:
“The work of adult life is not easy. As in childhood, each step presents not only new tasks of development but requires a letting go of the techniques that worked before. With each passage some magic must be given up, some cherished illusion of safety and comfortably familiar sense of self must be cast off, to allow for the greater expansion of our distinctiveness.”
—Gail Sheehy (20th century)
“He’d been numb a long time, years. All his nights down Ninsei, his nights with Linda, numb in bed and numb at the cold sweating center of every drug deal. But now he’d found this warm thing, this chip of murder. Meat, some part of him said. It’s the meat talking, ignore it.”
—William Gibson (b. 1948)