Composition
The verses are composed in the key of B minor, while the chorus is in the key of D major. The song is one of two tracks on The Wall which are free-standing and do not fade into or out of an adjacent track. (The other free-standing song is "Mother".) This is because on the original LP there was a hiatus of the music as side 3 of the album finished. This is also the longest song on the album at 6:21, followed by "Mother", which is 5:32.
According to Rolling Stone, the lyrics came from Roger Waters' experience when he was injected with tranquilizers for stomach cramps by a doctor prior to playing a Pink Floyd show in Philadelphia on the band's 1977 In the Flesh tour. "That was the longest two hours of my life," Waters said, "trying to do a show when you can hardly lift your arm." The experience gave him the idea which eventually became the lyrics to this song.
Waters and Gilmour disagreed about how to record the song as Gilmour preferred a more grungy style for the verses. In the end, Waters' preferred opening to the song and Gilmour's final solo were used on the album. Gilmour would later say, "We argued over "Comfortably Numb" like mad. Really had a big fight, went on for ages." For the backing of Gilmour's vocal section, he and session player Lee Ritenour used a pair of high-strung acoustic guitars (i.e. just the treble strings from a 12-string guitar), a tuning also used for the intro to "Hey You").
Read more about this topic: Comfortably Numb
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