Last month marked the 50th anniversary of Pink Floyd’s ninth studio album, Wish You Were Here. The album is being re-released on December 12th and will feature the original tracklist alongside previously unheard demos and live recordings.
Released in 1975, the album followed the earth-shattering success of Dark Side of the Moon (1973), which has since become the longest-charting record in Billboard history. With a well-documented history of interpersonal struggle amongst band members and the enormous pressure of having to follow one of the most important projects in music history, Pink Floyd emerged with an album centered on the themes of absence, isolation and loss—particularly in relation to former band member Syd Barrett whose substance abuse issues and declining mental health culminated into his departure from the band in 1968.
Half a century later, its themes feel more relevant than ever before.
Having been introduced by my once-hippie father to Pink Floyd’s The Wall (1979) at a young age, I have always had a profound admiration for the uniqueness of the band’s psychedelic style and experimental sound. Revisiting them now, it is evident that their work has not only withstood the test of time, it has successfully predicted how young people feel in relation to the dystopian world it once imagined.
“Remember when you were young? You shone like the sun.”
Written as a tribute to Syd Barrett, the opening lines of the album’s first song “Shine on You Crazy Diamond (Pts. I-V)” romanticize a brighter past before exploring what it means to feel truly alone in a world where chaos and social turmoil reign supreme. Unlike Dark Side of the Moon, which focuses on existential themes, Wish You Were Here only comments on the outside world to the extent that is relevant in understanding our own positionality as listeners. The effect is a deeply personal one: listeners are invited to reflect not only on the state of society, but on their own place within it.
“You gotta get an album out, you owe it to the people, We’re so happy we can hardly count”
In “Welcome to the Machine” and “Have a Cigar”, Pink Floyd openly expresses their resentment towards the demands of the music industry and capitalist greed. Then and now, these songs allow young people to connect with the voices of teachers, politicians and anyone else imposing unreachable standards on those still trying to understand themselves. In a world marked by a new kind of social and political turmoil, the message lands with a renewed strength on the young people of today. On university campuses, at family dinner tables, and across social media, the division which has become stronger than ever has led to greater feelings of isolation and being lost. One can’t help but feel like the dystopian universe that the band once warned us about has come into existence.
“We’re just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl year after year, running over the same old ground. What have we found? The same old fears, wish you were here.”
That refrain from the album’s title track, “Wish You Were Here”, captures a mood familiar to 2025: the sense of longing for connection in an era defined by disconnection. Above all else, the lyrics of Roger Waters, the voice of David Gilmour and the band’s instrumentals make us, the listeners, feel like outsiders in our own home. This song in particular demands that listeners ask themselves the following; how did things get so messed up? In a society where anxiety and depression rates are skyrocketing to unprecedented levels, it comes as no surprise that its themes have taken on a renewed importance. Arguably more so now than in the 1970s, young people feel increasingly resentful and powerless against a system that they did not create.
And yet, Wish You Were Here is not without hope.
For all its darkness, the album maintains a nostalgia and wishfulness for better days. Even in its most somber moments, Pink Floyd looks back fondly at what has been lost and holds onto the possibility of renewal. Perhaps this is where the record’s timelessness lies: in its ability to balance despair with longing, anger with understanding and pain with beauty.
Fifty years later, we are reminded that the themes of the album are not only still relevant, but are more important than ever before. Looking beyond all its cynicism, Wish You Were Here doesn’t just describe a fractured world; it helps us endure it. On this anniversary, the teenagers of the 70s all the way up until today’s generation are reminded that the album’s greatest gift is the comfort of knowing that someone else feels these emotions too.