Why Pink Floyd's 'More' Soundtrack Marked a Deliberate Pivot from Psychedelia to Songcraft

Pink Floyd’s 1969 soundtrack for Barbet Schroeder’s film More is often treated as a transitional curiosity, but it’s really the moment the band consciously decided they didn’t want to be a psychedelic jam machine forever. Songs like “Green is the Colour” and “Cymbaline” strip away the extended freakouts in favor of acoustic guitar, clear verses, and actual choruses. The band was already growing tired of the “anything goes” structure of their early live sets—Roger Waters later said they wanted to prove they could “write proper songs.”

This wasn’t an accident. The More sessions happened right after A Saucerful of Secrets, and the band was reading the room: audiences were starting to tune out twenty-minute instrumentals. David Gilmour’s airy fingerpicking on “Green is the Colour” gave Waters a melodic template that he’d revisit on Atom Heart Mother and Meddle. The folk-tinged acoustic ballad became a secret weapon—by the time Dark Side of the Moon came around, Pink Floyd had learned to bury their experimental impulses inside tight, emotional song structures. More is where they first tried that trick.