10 Classic Songs About How The Music Industry Sucks

Prog rock has never been a genre that fits in with the mainstream. Even though bands like Rush and King Crimson have devoted fanbases, they weren’t asking for their songs to get played on the radio. While Pink Floyd may have brought prog to the masses with Dark Side of the Moon, they used their chops to shine a spotlight on all their troubles.

Even though most of Wish You Were Here is written in tribute to their former bandmate Syd Barrett, Welcome to the Machine is Roger Waters tearing the music industry through the mud, painting the entire industry as something out of a dystopia. The minute that you hear him say ‘Welcome to the Machine,’ the sound is almost ominous, as if Waters is saying that we own whatever you have to offer and that he was the one that told you what to dream when you started playing guitar in the first place.

Since Barrett was one of the first major casualties in rock and roll, you can hear the contempt in Roger’s voice, as if he’s pointing the finger at every one of the suits that fed into Barrett’s habits and enabled him to lose his mind. The satire only gets more biting on the next tracks, like Have a Cigar having a guest appearance where a nameless record exec asks to meet the band and assumes that one of them is named Pink based on their name. It might seem like a good time once you reach the top of the charts, but there’s a fine line between being a recording artist and finding yourself as just another cog in the machine.