"The Final Cut" got panned when it was released but i really think it's the most underrated Pink Floyd album , it's better every time you listen to it .
Such an epic album and if I'm not wrong it's about his uncle whose returned from the war and the damage done , it runs right through the album - just brilliant
This was my anthem in adolescence. As I get older, I realize it might be everyone's. The story relates just about every insecurity we face through life. It is a song about being jaded so badly that one can't even enjoy the most beautiful of moments ("Far from flying high in clear blue skies/I'm spiralling down to the hole in the ground where I hide"). Roger Waters lays out the whole thing for us, starting with a guilty child who "makes love to girls in magazines" and wonders, "could anybody love him." He builds up an array of defenses, described in vivid detail at the beginning of the second verse, "If you negotiate the minefield in the drive ... " Finally, when faced with possible love later, he is so suspicious and distrustful that he is incapable of the feeling. He can "barely define the shape of this moment in time." He wonders, "If I show you my dark side, would you still hold me tonight?/If I open my heart to you and show you my weak side/What would you do?" This song basically sums up the entire previous Wall album in a beautiful and haunting picture of loneliness.
It really does sum up The Wall. To my shame, I never listened to The Final Cut with the lyrics layed out in front of me. I missed on something for all those years!
In the mid 80's, I went through a bad divorce and lost my kids. I was so despondent that I wanted to bring the curtain down to stop the pain. It was this album that got me through that terrible, dark time. Just hearing the pain in Roger Waters voice made me feel that I wasn't alone. If he could tough it through, so could I. Thanks, Mr Waters
@@pommie5093 Thanks Amanda (which, by the way, is my daughter's name). Life is good now...it was just paying the dues that was overwhelming some days. Those were the day's that Pink Floyd kept me going.
Yeah bro. Post-war dream, Southampton Dock, Fletcher Memorial Home, Not no John, Two Suns on Sunset are fantastic and melancholy pieces of The best Waters' music.
Absolutely agree. It's one of those semi-obscure albums that you really need to listen to it as it is, without expectations of it being "the next The Wall" or whatever, and on its own merits. Put yourself in the mind of the narrator(s) and actually listen, and try to put yourself in their places throughout. It's a brutally depressing album, but also one of the very best ever recorded.
Any one familiar with Waters and the Floyd will catch the allusions that make this piece all the more raw and visceral. Roger writes from the heart which really makes it universally personal. It has been awhile since I played something off the Final Cut. I may just stick this in my Wall playlist right after Waiting For The Worms.
My favourite Floyd album. If I remember correctly, Roger Waters didn't rate his performance on this album; he felt he was too angry. Well, that's exactly what makes it for me - there's just so much emotion both musically and lyrically. My 15 year old son is now madly into Pink Floyd and Roger Waters, and this is his fav album too. You should see us getting into it - surprised the neighbours have't called the police or health-services! Like Matt Kenary said below, do yourself a massive favour and just listen to the whole album.
“And if I showed you my dark side, will you still hold me tonight? And if I opened my heart to you, and showed you my weak side, what would you do?” Does it get any deeper then that?💕
I have a lot of mixed feelings about this album. I think there is some good stuff in here, but I guess it just still feels to me like a bunch of leftover ideas or like an appendix to The Wall. But still, that's not inherently a bad thing.
I could tell you felt it in the solo! It's some of the most emotional sounds ever created and perfectly fitting for the song! It's screams out the pain!
This is a very very good album I've probably listen to it more than any other album Pink Floyd album. Rodger Waters is so good at singing songs like this! This is an album you have to listen to it entirety
Musically, this song pulls the ear to listen. Then the lyrics are right there, easy to understand, not garbled or buried behind loud sounds. Couple that together, and you have your attention drawn to the topic of the song, which is somewhat dark. Brilliant! Good reaction! I have always liked this song because like so many Pink Floyd songs it is complex, deep and it makes you think.
The whole album is very very emotionally powerful, brings tears to my eyes still. It might really be the first Roger Waters album as the rest of the group just basically did what they were asked to, but by 'Eck it's good!
Actually the first album i bought. I listened it in high school and no one else understood it, but i loved it! Later i really got into all of their music. I could tell even back then this was the ending piece of the Wall.
Might i suggest doing reactions from Roger Water solo album Amused To Death. In my humble opinion it is a stellar album indeed, and is as fine an album and as highly produced as any of Pink Floyd's masterpieces. Thanks, and your reactions are brilliant, and well done for not pausing the songs at any point...listening to them uninterrupted is how Pink Floyd songs should be listened and reacted to. Good job. Subscribed to your channel 👍
This one has a real comfortably numb feel to it. "Fletcher memorial Home" is awesome off this album. Once again you really seem to get it. The depth of the lyrics and the music can be overwhelming if your not in a good mental place, you can grab on to that depth and emotion and it can have a negative effect on you. But that same music and lyrics can be a source of strength, and even comfort if you aren't bogged down in depression. Comfortably numb is a perfect example, I've known people in a really bad mental place that embraced that song too hard and it actually increased their urges for suicide, I could see the final cut having that same effect. It doesn't have to have that effect, because when you strip it down their messages in their music are only meant to open doors of thought and discussion and to acknowledge it can be difficult and emotional just existing at times.
Many of these songs were left off THE WALL, as Gilmour thought this album was about Waters himself and didnt fit the bands direction, and stated to Waters " If theae songs were not good enough for THE WALL how are they good enough now. Wow, as this album is amazing but i consider it a Waters solo album with Gilmour and Mason, as Wright was no longer with them until Gilmour fought for the Rights to the Pink Floyd name. CRAZY STUFF. Gilmour actually left production due to arguments after recording NOT NOW JOHN. There is also a 1983 interview with Roger where he states this is probably the last Pink Floyd album...funny how thimgs work out. He was a genius but a bit arrogant during these years
I´m 45 now but wen i was a kid before go to sleep put the headphones and listen this albun in a cassett in my sanyo audio tape player and in my brain i imagined all like a videoclip, good times now it´s more simple you go to youtube and see and listen what you want. very nice the tecnologie of nowadays.Sorry my english.
Watching you discovering the profundity and originality of this amazing band takes me back to my own experience in my late teens and early twenties. Pink Floyd changed me, they were my Road to Damascus.
This gives so many memories I'm 46 but I could be around the fire now with boys years ago nailing joints with the final cut on our ghetto blaster hahaha👌
The saxophone solos on this album were done by the one and only Raphael Ravenscroft. He was best know for his riff in Jerry Rafferty's song, Baker Street.
the solo! oh my god, the solo! Gilmour is the best! if he had contributed more it would be one of the best Pink Floyd Albuns, our bad luck that rogers and the rest of the group had broken relationships at this time(early 80´s)
This song was indeed started during the recording of the Wall and in fact grow from the same Roger Waters demo, a song entitled The Doctor, as did Comfortably Numb.
I remember listening to this album in college when it first came out, but the young me hadn’t lived enough to really appreciate it. Thanks for reintroducing me to it. For me, easily the most deeply emotional of Pink Floyd.
What I love about Waters is his cryptic sarcasm, one great example in these lyrics is how we don't make it past 'the shotguns in the hall' hence the BOOM ! Brilliant.
I really love this album..it gets some criticism for being essentially the first Roger Waters solo album... Idk know about all that, but this album feels powerful to me...fun fact, this album was originally intended to be a sequel to The Wall.
Having just watched The Gunners Dream reaction it highlights that this is a concept album and the same chords sequences and fragments of melody are repeated. In fact in my mind this is effectively the second half of the same song, or a reprise.
There are some interesting stories around the album Final Cut floating around. The entire album was not shaped in its first form as it turned out on the album. Some songs were "left-overs" not included in The Wall album and thereafter Roger Waters planned to included them in the movie The Wall and some songs were written new for the movie The Wall. But as Rogers Waters saw the Falkland war develop he changed the direction and included the songs in the album then called The Final Cut and directed the theme to handle the stress of wars, directly or post war.
Without being a know all..... floyd is my life lol...... I'm 43 and still cry at most albums. Pink, The Wall, is Roger.... The main lyrical force of Floyd at this time. The Wall and the Final Cut, Pro's and Cons of Hitch Hiking were supposed too be a ''One Piece'' or trilogy album. It got cut, and you had The Wall as one piece (a biopic of Roger's life) mixed with bits of Syd. And The Wall (the same). Then, The Final Cut.......... If you listen too all three albums... Get a bottle of Whiskey, turn your phone off, and listen to 4hrs of music that will change you for life.
The lyrics at the end are the perfect example of how a person that went spiraling down a slippery slope into depression can be pulled out of it, or at least set the thought of suicide permanently aside, thanks to something as trivial as a ringing phone and the compulsion to pick up the receiver. Reducing the suicide thoughts to something trivial as well. Because, most of the time (not talking about folks suffering from manic depression, mind) when you're in a depression or a depressive mood, what you get is some kind of tunnel-vision, or tunnel-mindedness that keeps you from seeing things from different angles and instead keeps your mind on this single track with seemingly no alternative but to keep going down the same road. Then, the phone rings. And all of a sudden you're on a different track...
As Matt Kenary saids, the whole album in one go and if you not satisfied go ahead and listen to Rogers solo album "Amused to death", Perfect sence I & II kills you... Cheers Brother!
if memory serves, that's one of the songs off of The Final Cut album that were originally going to be part of The Wall. they only made up one side of an album, so the songs were cut and made up part of this album. but that's why you got a sense of The Wall from this song
I feel it's about Rodger Waters saying this is it guys in Pink Floyd this is the Final Cut in a way he was right in a way he was wrong. Like all the other songs that has multiple meanings.
''there's a kid who had a big hallucination ..., making love t'girls in magazines '' along with ''and no one flies around the sun '' maybe the saddest but true lyrics ever put to paper. that and the lyrics to van der graafs still life closing lyrics. of course
David Gilmour once described The Wall as: "Roger having a bit of a whinge." As much as the adolescent me bought into the whole concept, and as much as the work contains much truth and beauty, the grown-up me has to admit there is a certain amount of truth to it. Nowhere more evident than in this song, I think. It's a stage most of us go through, but unless you are overwhelmingly self-obsessed, one we grow out of. It's why when he chose to re-visit The Wall for his live shows, Waters re-cast it as more of an anti-war statement and general comment on our times, a message reinforced by his most recent album and tour.
I don't normally post a link to a forum. However, this forum lists some reliable and researchable primary sources which show that David Gilmour didn't think too highly of this album. www.neptunepinkfloyd.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=55&t=21770
The problem with this entire album is well represented in this song (basically a spinoff of Comfortably Numb): the climax is reached with the guitar solo, a typical moment of resolve. On the contrary, the album is too shy, verbose with anti-climax music, the exact opposite of Pink Floyd skills and grandeur (specifically the ability to take the listener to another dimension). Good song, but Gilmour was right: the album is made of The Wall discarded pieces.
