Sounds Magazine Called Wish You Were Here 'Boring' — Here’s Why

When Wish You Were Here dropped in 1975, not everyone bowed down. Sounds magazine ran a particularly rough review, calling the album “boring” and accusing Pink Floyd of treading water after Dark Side of the Moon. The critic, Pete Erskine, argued that the album lacked the structural tightness of its predecessor and felt more like a collection of drawn-out jams than a cohesive statement.

Erskine’s main beef was with the album’s reliance on the 25-minute “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” suite split across two sides. He saw it as self-indulgent noodling, writing that the band “has forgotten the importance of brevity.” The lyricism was also dinged for being overly sentimental about Syd Barrett — one critic even joked it was a “graveyard tribute” that didn’t earn its runtime. History, of course, disagreed pretty sharply.