Trivia / Amused to Death

• Black Sheep Hit: "What God Wants (Part One)", Waters' biggest solo hit, is the closest his solo career gets to Hard Rock.
• Channel Hop: Having been under their wing (mostly through various sublabels) since Pink Floyd started putting out records, Waters parted ways with his UK label, EMI, and signed a worldwide deal with his longtime US label, Columbia Records, which continues to this day.
• Colbert Bump: In his 1995 book The End of Education, Neil Postman claimed that he gained a good deal of newfound attention from younger audiences thanks to the fact that this album was titled after his earlier book Amusing Ourselves to Death. Even if he was indifferent towards Waters' work, Postman appreciated the attention he brought.
• Creator-Driven Successor: The album, especially in hindsight, is often been described by fans and analysts as on par with Pink Floyd's classic albums, owed to its return to and expansion upon the band's late '70s sound and its concept being similar to that of The Final Cut. Executives at Columbia Records apparently admitted as much to him, saying that it would have sold many more copies if it was a Pink Floyd album.
• Creator's Favorite Episode: Waters indicated in a Classic Rock interview that he views this album as his best solo work, ranking it with Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall as one of his three most essential works. He would reiterate his opinion in a 2013 interview with BBC HardTalk, describing Amused to Death as "completely underrated."
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: The second music video for "What God Wants, Part I", which combines the original Performance Video footage with stock footage of animals and Stop Motion animations, is the only one of the song's three clips to not be available on Roger Waters' YouTube channel. Consequently, the only way to watch it is through fan reuploads.
• Sequel Gap: The album released five years after Radio K.A.O.S., owed to a mid-development change in concept caused by the Tiananmen Square protests and the Gulf War.
• Technology Marches On: As a concept album about the effect of television, the record shows this in its cover art designs. The original 1992 cover prominently features a CRT TV, while the 2015 reissue has a flat panel on the cover.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Waters began recording Amused to Death as far back as late 1987 as a Radio K.A.O.S. sequel, with '"Going to Live in L.A." as one of the tracks, but it eventually became its own separate piece by 1992.
  • (In)famously, a sample of 2001: A Space Odyssey was to be used on Amused to Death referring to "Dave", but Stanley Kubrick refused to let him use it, hence the backmasked Take That! to Kubrick. The sample, which had already been used in live performances, would eventually be cleared for the 2015 remaster, with the backmasked jab being removed in turn.
  • The album cover, as a Take That! to the other members of Pink Floyd, was to feature a picture of Gilmour, Wright and Mason submerged into a martini glass.
  • A version of "It's a Miracle" exists that is more uptempo and features Flea on bass, but it has never been released (if it's even in releasable form).

---