10 Rock Music Acts That Went Dark (AND NAILED IT)

Pretty much everything that came out by Pink Floyd after the Syd Barrett era seemed to be defined by darkness in one way or another. The music business may have been fun, but it had cost them one of their musical brothers, and the next few years would see them trying to move on with him no longer making music. Though every release seemed to have hints of what happened, The Wall practically acts as an hour long cautionary tale about what the music business has to offer.

Inspired partly by Syd and Roger Water's own upbringing, this rock opera was constructed around the crowd not relating to you, to the point where the titular Pink builds a wall around himself and proceeds to shut himself away from society. While songs like Welcome to the Machine off of Wish You Were Here hinted at the shady side of the business, this goes even further down the rabbit hole, involving everything from abuse Pink suffered back in school to being hopped up on drugs during a concert and becoming a fascist dictator calling out commands to his audience.

Even though Pink finally realizes what he's done and tears down his own wall by the end of the album, there's still that overarching feeling of instability, with Pink always being one notch away from repeating himself again. It's not easy to overcome these kind of feelings as a rock star, and The Wall is practically a case study for how easy it is to fall into your downward spiral.