Top 10 Best Pink Floyd Albums

For true Pink Floyd fans, Wish You Were Here is the answer. Dark Side is the grandest, The Wall the most ambitious, but Wish You Were Here is the most human. The loss of Barrett, the cynicism about the music industry, the friendship that disappeared: it's all in here. Shine On You Crazy Diamond is the most beautiful thing this band ever created. This is number one. Pink Floyd is a band you won't understand in one listen. Their best work requires time, attention and preferably a good sound system. Start with Dark Side of the Moon for accessibility, then go to Wish You Were Here for the depth, and discover Animals if you want to know how dark and brilliant they could be.

741 weeks on the Billboard 200. One of the best-selling albums of all time. Dark Side of the Moon is so famous that it's almost difficult to say anything new about it. But listen to it again, preferably with headphones: Time, Money, The Great Gig in the Sky and Brain Damage form a perfect whole. No single song stands alone. This is album art in its purest form.

The great concept album about isolation, trauma and the walls people build around themselves. Double album, rock opera, later filmed with Bob Geldof. Another Brick in the Wall, Comfortably Numb and Hey You are classics everyone knows. The Wall is sometimes too theatrical and too long, but at its best it's Pink Floyd at their most dramatic and impressive.

Based on George Orwell's Animal Farm and equally bitter. Animals is the darkest and most political album by Roger Waters. Pigs, dogs and sheep as metaphors for the classes in society. Dogs lasts seventeen minutes and is worth every second. Less loved than The Wall or Dark Side, but for those who love rawer Floyd, this is the best they ever made.

Echoes, the 23-minute closer, is the first true masterpiece of the Waters-Gilmour-Mason-Wright lineup. The first side of the album is looser and more playful. Meddle is proof that Pink Floyd was ready for something big. That big came two years later.

Syd Barrett disappears, David Gilmour joins the band. They search for their new direction and you can hear it. But the title track is already a preview of the epic structures to come, and Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun is one of the most hypnotic songs they ever made.

The soundtrack to the film "La Vallée" is one of the most underrated albums in their catalog. Compact, direct and without the great conceptual ambitions of later work. Wot's... Uh the Deal and Childhood's End are beautiful songs that in any other band would be the crown jewels.

The 23-minute title suite with choir and orchestra is ambitious to the point of absurdity. Pink Floyd themselves hate the album, but there's something irresistibly strange in it. Summer '68 and Fat Old Sun are surprisingly accessible. Atom Heart Mother is the band at a crossroads, searching for who they want to be.

The only true Syd Barrett album. Psychedelic, playful and completely detached from everything the band would later do. Astronomy Domine, Interstellar Overdrive and Bike sound like they come from a parallel universe. Barrett was a genius who burned himself out too quickly. This album is his monument. Pink Floyd has one of the most special discographies in rock history. Psychedelic, progressive, philosophical and sometimes just overwhelmingly beautiful. The band went through multiple eras, from the eccentric Syd Barrett period to Roger Waters-driven concept albums and beyond. These are the ten best.