The Final Cut: Q, Melody Maker, and the Re-evaluation of Pink Floyd's Most Divisive Album

When The Final Cut hit shelves in 1983, it was basically a Roger Waters solo record with the band’s name on it—David Gilmour played guitar but refused a writing credit. Q magazine gave it a respectful four stars in a later reissue review, calling it a “bleak masterpiece,” but the original Melody Maker verdict was less forgiving: they dismissed it as “self-indulgent, bombastic, and utterly joyless.”

Over time, the album has split fans into two camps. Some see it as a flawed farewell—the moment the band’s collective magic died under Waters’ obsessive control, with Gilmour and Mason practically reduced to session players. Others argue it’s an underrated concept album, a tighter, angrier companion to The Wall that digs into Thatcher-era politics and Waters’ father’s death in WWII with real emotional weight.

It didn’t help that the recording sessions were miserable. Waters and Gilmour fought over every note, and Nick Mason later said the band “almost ceased to exist” during the process. Rick Wright had been fired years earlier. What remains is a strange artifact