The Untold Story of Clare Torry’s Improvised Vocal on 'The Great Gig in the Sky'

The soaring, wordless vocal on “The Great Gig in the Sky” wasn’t planned. Pink Floyd brought in session singer Clare Torry, then only 25, to lay down a few lines over the instrumental track. She was given almost no direction—producer Alan Parsons simply played her the song and asked her to “do something.” She didn’t know the song was about death; she assumed it was about a relationship. So she improvised a raw, gospel-inflected cry that matched the emotional arc of the music, hitting those high wails and quiet breaths in one take.

Torry later said she felt embarrassed leaving the session, thinking she’d overdone it. But the band loved it—especially Roger Waters, who kept her vocal in the final mix. For decades she received only a standard session fee (£35). In 2004, she took the band to court, arguing she effectively co-wrote the piece. The case was settled out of court, and she now gets a share of the royalties. The irony: she had no idea what the song was about until years later when someone told her it was about dying. Yet her spontaneous vocal became one of the most iconic moments in rock history.