Why Richard Wright’s 1968 Solo Single ‘It Would Be So Nice’ Is a Collector’s Holy Grail

Collectors chase this 7-inch because it’s the only proper solo single Richard Wright released during his Pink Floyd years — and it flopped so hard the label pulled it after just a few thousand copies. It was issued in the UK in April 1968 on Columbia (not the usual EMI imprint), then withdrawn almost immediately, maybe because radio ignored it or because the band’s management wanted to keep focus on the group. Today, original copies change hands for hundreds of pounds, and even the picture sleeve is nearly impossible to find.

What makes the song itself so jarring is its cheerful, baroque-pop arrangement: a horn section, a crisp piano riff, and a sing-along chorus about feeling happy when the sun shines. That’s a world away from what Pink Floyd were doing at the exact same moment — recording the drone-heavy, tape-looped “A Saucerful of Secrets” or the atonal freakout “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun.” Wright later admitted the single was an attempt to write something “commercial” after the band’s first star songwriter, Syd Barrett, had left. “It Would Be So Nice” never charted, but its sheer weirdness — a Pink Floyd member trying to sound like the Bee Gees — is why collectors still pay up.