History Music / TheWall

* DestructiveRomance: "Don't Leave Me Now" sees Pink reflect on his collapsing marriage by portraying it as this, with him as the destructive party. Pink notes how he would "put [his wife] through the shredder in front of [his] friends" and "beat [her] to a pulp on a Saturday night," though the film adaptation clarifies that he was simply exaggerating his faults out of anger and self-pity. In actuality, he was emotionally distant from his wife rather than aggressive. This contradiction is consolidated in "The Trial", where Pink envisions his now-ex-wife giving him a tremendous TheReasonYouSuck speech about how much pain his lack of warmth and commitment caused.

* DisneyAcidSequence: the animation sequence for The Trial

* CreepyCircusMusic: "The Trial" opens with an orchestrated dark cabaret jaunt that continues until the judge shows up, to show just how twisted Pink's own psyche has become and how strange and creepy the trial itself is.

* SinisterShades: In live performances of the album (or at least the material from side four), Music/RogerWaters dons a set of aviator shades when playing the part of Fascist Pink, invoking the sunglasses' association with dictators to tie into the character's ruthless nature.

* TheVillainSucksSong: "The Trial" in which Pink gets put in trial for "showing feelings of a almost human nature".

'''Pink:''' No, don't do it!\\
'''Trial observer:''' Go on judge, shit on him!

-->''There'll be no more AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!''

* VisionaryVillain: Pink quite clearly spells out his vision for Britain in "Waiting For The Worms." It involves sending "our colored cousins home again" and implementing the "FinalSolution to strengthen the strain" to allow Brittania to rule again, in his words,

* WorldOfHam: "The Trial". Waters plays five different characters, each one hammier than the last. This is amplified in the ''Live In Berlin'' version, where each character is played by a different actor, but no less hammier. Standouts include ''Creator/TimCurry'' as The Prosecutor, Ute Lemper as The Wife, and Creator/AlbertFinney as The Judge.

-->'''Roger Waters:''' Are there any paranoids in the audience tonight? Is there anybody who worries about things? [[TakeThatAudience Pathetic!]] This is for all the WEAK people in the audience! Is there anyone here who's WEAK? (Audience cheers) This is for you, it's called 'Run Like Hell'![[note]]Sometimes Waters would introduce the song under the title "Run Like Fuck"[[/note]] [[AudienceParticipationSong Let's all have a CLAP! COME ON, I CAN'T HEAR YOU! PUT YOUR HANDS TOGETHER! HAVE A GOOD TIME! ENJOY YOURSELVES!!! THAT'S BETTER]]! [[CarefulWithThatAxe AAAAAARGH!]]

Fills me wit the urge to '''DEFECATE!''' \\

'''Trial observer''': Go on judge, shit on him!

* GainaxEnding: [[spoiler: Pink puts himself through a hallucinatory "trial" where the most important people from his past life berate him for causing them so much pain, the monsters from within his mind condemn him for showing human emotions, and he has his mental wall torn down as a "final sentence". In the movie, we cut to a clip of a brick wall exploding, and see a strangely tranquil scene of children playing in some rubble and pouring out (what appears to be) a Molotov cocktail as "Outside the Wall" plays. Roll credits.]]

* KayfabeMusic: [[InvokedTrope Invoked]] and {{Lampshaded}} "In the Flesh". Ironically, it's a BookEnd to the song "In the Flesh?" where backup or guest musicians usually take the place of Pink Floyd wearing Pink Floyd masks.

-->''Do I have to stand up \\
Wild-eyed in the spotlight? \\
What a nightmare \\

* TitleDrop: "When the Tiger Broke Free Part II".
--> ''It was dark all around/There was frost in the ground/When the Tigers Broke Free''

->''[[{{Bookends}} –we came in?]]''\\\

-->'''Roger Waters:''' Are there any paranoids in the audience tonight? Is there anybody who worries about things? [[TakeThatAudience Pathetic!]] This is for all the WEAK people in the audience! Is there anyone here who's WEAK? (Audience cheers) This is for you, it's called 'Run Like Hell'![[note]]Sometimes Waters would introduce the song under the title "Run Like Fuck"[[/note]] [[AudienceParticipationSong Let's all have a CLAP! COME ON, I CAN'T HEAR YOU!]] [[AxCrazy PUT YOUR HANDS TOGETHER! HAVE A GOOD TIME! ENJOY YOURSELVES!!! THAT'S BETTER!]] [[CarefulWithThatAxe AAAAAARGH!]]

* UsefulNotes/AmericanAccents: Briefly. The Doctor in "Comfortably Numb" has Roger Waters' impression of a California accent, which in combination with his delivery makes him sound uncannily like Music/WeirdAlYankovic.

* AudienceParticipationSong: {{Invoked|Trope}} in live performances during the "Pink's concert turns into a fascist rally" portion, to go with Roger Waters' opinion of concerts as mass hysteria. One early idea was to have Pink ''literally'' bomb his audience, who'd still cheer as they were ripped apart.

* UsefulNotes/BritishAccents: Throughout, naturally. However, they are used in some notable ways.
** Pink speaks with a London accent, but it varies. In "Mother", for example, it's something closer to the way Roger Waters usually talks, but in Pink's verses in "The Trial", it thickens to the point that he sounds more like Creator/NoelFielding.
** The Schoolmaster has a very thick Scottish accent.
** Curiously, the Judge is almost invariably described as having an upper-class English accent - when in fact, even though you would expect him to, he doesn't. On the album and in the film, he speaks with something closer to a Cockney accent. You can hear it in his trailing l's ("the fuww penawlty of law") and strong syllable divisions ("ret-I-yah" as opposed to the RP pronunciation, which is closer to "ret-AHR"). However, performers other than Roger Waters have given the Judge various accents.
** Some performances have Pink's Wife explicitly avert this by being given [[FrenchJerk a French accent instead.]]

** Out of universe, the album was inspired by one that Roger Waters had, as listed at the top of the page.

* DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: The charge of the audience into the concert hall at the beginning of "In the Flesh?" in the movie, at least to one annotator, seemed suggestive of procreative sperm trying to reach their way into the birth canal to unite with the egg cell.

** Real life example for "Another Brick In The Wall"; the entire point of the album, being about the social wall Pink constructed for himself, and how in said song the teachers were just another brick building his wall, completely went over a majority of the audiences heads, who instead took a different interpretation, focusing instead on the lyrics "We don't need no thought-control". The result was everyone thinking the song was about schools being a form of {{Brainwashing}}. See Accidental Aesop on the YMMV page.

* HereWeGoAgain: Pink's mental problems are cyclical. Every time he goes into one of his "turns" (and "One of My Turns" makes it quite clear this is a habitual occurrence), his friends have to deal with an unreasonable, abusive Pink. Some of them "stumble and fall" (i.e. his wife), but they still try to help.

* TheLoad: With his drug problems, lack of songwriting contributions and keyboard work holding up the sessions, Richard Wright had become this during the sessions, at least in Roger Waters' view, so he was booted from the band.

* LossOfIdentity: In the film version, whenever a group has masks on their faces, this is essentially what happened to them.

* ANaziByAnyOtherName: Pink's Hammers—''snicker''—take cues from UsefulNotes/BenitoMussolini's black shirts, SS troopers, and the KKK/skinheads. "Waiting for the Worms" doesn't really bother to try to disguise the fact that they are neo-Nazis, as the lyrics reference the Holocaust with "the final solution to strengthen the strain" and "waiting to turn on the showers and fire the ovens".
** The Hammers, in turn, inspired one of the more prominent real-life Neo-Nazi Skinhead groups to name themselves "[[PoliticallyIncorrectVillain Hammerskins]]" and to appropriate the marching hammers symbol as their own.

* RealLifeWritesThePlot: As mentioned previously, the spitting incident on the ''In the Flesh'' Tour was the genesis for this album. It's telling that the Fascist Pink concert, as well as the HowWeGotHere moment that starts the album, are both named "In the Flesh". The gigantic stadium seen in the album's gatefold artwork looks like the Montreal Olympic Stadium on steroids.

** Inverted: The fictitious Hammerskins of the film inspired a real-life skinhead group.
*** Not-so-Inverted: Those Hammerskins in the film were ''real skinheads''.

* ReallyGetsAround: Pink's envisioning of his wife during "The Trial" is... not kind, portraying her as a GoldDigger with ''handles'' on her waist with an exposed vagina. [[MoodDissonance While she gets the most justified and acerbic lines criticising his behaviour.]]

* SanitySlippageSong. It's practically a Sanity Slippage ''Album''. "One of My Turns" is where Pink first snaps. "The Trial" may be where it's most overt though.

** A list of the {{sanity slippage song}}s in order: "Empty Spaces" (kinda), "One of My Turns", "Another Brick in the Wall (Part 3)", "In the Flesh", and "The Trial".

* ScareChord: In the 1980-81 live shows, "In The Flesh?" would be introduced by an emcee as the band gradually tuned up and counted in the song in the background. "In The Flesh" (See OnceMoreWithClarity above) has the band interrupt the emcee mid-sentence with no warning whatsoever.

** This bit can also double as Fridge Brilliance since in the context of the album, it's a bit of {{foreshadowing}} about Pink's mental breakdown. Also, the scarily in-depth analysis mentioned above points out that Waters abandoning the message to pick up the phone reinforces the entire album's theme about the importance of communication. This interpretation's also aided by Waters' later admission that he would've ended up like Pink if it wasn't for Carolyne.

* [[SelfDeprecation Take That Me]]: Pink acknowledges he's fully responsible for ''everything'' he does. The Trial is him putting ''himself'' on Trial.
** "Empty Spaces" has a [[{{Backmasking}} backmasked]] message that pokes fun at the "subliminal messaging" urban legend, asking listeners to send their answer to Old Pink "care of the Funny Farm, Chalfont-" before someone else interrupts to let Roger know his wife has called.

* ViciousCycle: The album's main theme is how the cycle of lack of communication perpetuates itself.

* ProductPlacement: Outside the concert at the beginning, there is a "Feeling [=7UP=]" soda billboard featuring [[UsefulNotes/MLBTeams Philadelphia Phillies baseball]] great Mike Schmidt. The fact he's grinning down at fans having the crap beaten out of them by cops makes it one that [=7UP=] probably didn't want in the film. Knowing Roger Waters, that was probably the point.

* DaylightHorror: "Goodbye Blue Sky" references the fact that, during the Blitz, bright and clear skies were feared by British civilians since the Axis was more likely to bomb them when visibility was better. The animated sequence in the movie, however, goes for a dark and cloudy sky.

# "Hey You" (4:40)[[note]]A scene for this song was filmed for ''Pink Floyd – The Wall'', but it was cut out both to conserve running time and because it was thought to be too repetitive (as 80% of its footage already appeared during montage sequences elsewhere in the film)[[/note]]

# "The Show Must Go On" (1:36)[[note]]Excluded from ''Pink Floyd – The Wall''[[/note]]

--> ''All in all you're just another brick in THE WALL''

-->'''Sound FX:''' (Marching boots)\\

-->When we grew up an went to school there were certain teachers \\
Who would hurt the children any way they could. \\
By pouring their derision upon anything we did \\
Exposing every weakness, no matter how carefully hidden by the kids.

-->'''Pink''': How could you go? / You know I need you / to beat to a pulp on a Saturday night.

-->'''Left Channel:''' You better run all day and run all night\\

--->'''Pink:''' ''Mother do you think they'll try to break... my balls?''

* RearrangeTheSong: Much of the album's material is remixed and re-recorded in the film adaptation; some portions are redone by the film's actors (e.g. Bob Geldof performing both parts of "In the Flesh", Alex [=McAvoy=] giving his version of the teacher's shouts during "The Happiest Days of Our Lives" and "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2", and Jenny Wright performing Trudy Young's part as the groupie in "One of My Turns"). The only songs left untouched are "Goodbye Cruel World" and "Vera".

-->'''Roger Waters''': Congratulations, hunters, you've just discovered the secret message! Please send your answer to Old Pink, care of the Funny Farm, Chalfont...\\
'''James Guthrie'''[[note]]One of the album's producers[[/note]]: ''(interrupts)'' Roger, Carolyne[[note]]Roger's then-wife[[/note]] is on the phone.\\
'''Roger Waters''': Okay.

* SurprisinglyGentleSong: For being a famously depressing film/album, it's easy to forget both end with [[YouAreNotAlone "Outside the Wall"]]. [[spoiler: {{B|ookEnds}}ut [[HereWeGoAgain then...]]]]

--> ''All alone, or in twos\\

!! Tracklist:
!!! Disc One
[[AC: Side One]]

[[AC: Side Two]]

!!! Disc Two
[[AC: Side Three]]

# "Hey You" (4:40) [[note]]A scene for this song was filmed for ''Pink Floyd – The Wall'', but it was cut out both to conserve running time and because it was thought to be too repetitive (as 80% of its footage already appeared during montage sequences elsewhere in the film)[[/note]]

[[AC: Side Four]]

# "The Show Must Go On" (1:36) [[note]]Excluded from ''Pink Floyd – The Wall''[[/note]]

** "Empty Spaces" has a [[{{Backmasking}}|backmasked]] message that pokes fun at the "subliminal messaging" urban legend, asking listeners to send their answer to an address in Chalfont before someone else interrupts to let Roger know his wife has called.

* JudicialWig: Pink's trial is presided over by Judge Arse in the film and theatrical versions. He is ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin—a giant talking human backside wearing a judge's wig. On the film version, the Judge first appears as a worm, which then turns into a wig.

* SinisterShades: Roger's aviators for the Fascist Pink persona have this effect in live performances.

* SinisterShades: Roger's aviators for the Fascist Pink personal have this effect in live performances.

''The Wall'' is the eleventh studio album by Music/PinkFloyd, released on 30 November 1979. It is their last studio album to feature Pink Floyd as a quartet: keyboardist Richard Wright was fired during the making of this album, and while he officially returned by ''Music/TheDivisionBell'', bassist and de-facto bandleader Music/RogerWaters had left as well in the interim. The theme of this album is similar to the one found in the band's earlier work ''Music/TheDarkSideOfTheMoon'' as it involved descent into insanity. The album also marked the start of the band's working relationship with Bob Ezrin, previously known for his work with artists such as Music/LouReed, Music/AliceCooper, Music/{{KISS}}, and Music/PeterGabriel; Ezrin would bring his bombastic sound to this album, building off of the {{punk|Rock}}-inspired ArenaRock sound that Pink Floyd had already developed on ''Music/{{Animals|1977}}''.

** Alan Parker had this reaction after the extras (real skinheads, by the way) really got into the rape scene in "Run Like Hell".

* DramaticChoirNumber: In "Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)", the second iteration of the verse and chorus is performed by [[KidsRock a choir of children]] from Islington Green School, representing students rebelling against abusive teachers like the ones that torment Pink in the album's narrative. The choir was inserted by producer Bob Ezrin to extend what was originally an interlude into a potential single, and had them record their parts in secret to avoid drawing suspicion from their teachers.

* DramaticChoirNumber: "Another Brick in the Wall" has the children's choir singing towards the end.

* AutoErotica: During "Run Like Hell", Pink warns that even lovers in cars are not safe from the wrath of the Hammers, and in the part of the movie that features the song, an interracial couple engaging in this trope are set upon by the Hammers in question, the man being dragged out of the car and beaten up and the woman being raped.

* AutoErotica: During "Run Like Hell", Pink warns that even lovers in cars are not safe from the wrath of the Hammers, and in the part of the movie that features the song, an interracial couple engaging in this trope are set upon by the Hammers in question, the man being dragged out the car and beaten up and the woman being raped.

* AutoErotica: During the "Run Like Hell" sequence, an interracial couple engaging in this trope suffer the wrath of the Hammers, with the man being dragged out the car and beaten up and the woman being raped.