How Pink Floyd’s Frustration With the Music Industry Was Reflected in ‘Have a Cigar’

12Tone, the fast-talking, quick-doodling music theorist, took a look at the classic Pink Floyd song “Have a Cigar” from the album Wish You Were Here, a song with biting lyrics about musicians being treated as commodities by the music industry rather than the artists they were.

“Wish You Were Here” wasn’t a passion project, it was a project of necessity, ground out of the band by a music industry that demanded a follow-up to keep the money flowing, and at the heart of the album, Waters struck back, laying bare all his sharpest critiques of the business that had destroyed his soul.

He also looks at how the carefully crafted musical composition itself reflects the band’s general frustration of being uninspired by their success and disconnected from their art.

What do you do when you’ve spent your entire life working toward a single goal, and then you accomplish it beyond your wildest dreams? That was the conundrum faced by Pink Floyd after the release of “Dark Side Of The Moon”, and while each member had their own response, the overall answer seemed to be “mourn the loss of a purpose”. They’d done it, and they weren’t happy, so the band…decided to look inward.