High Hopes - Pink Floyd

Album: The Division Bell

Pink Floyd’s last album closes with a song that has become a classic in their repertoire. It features David Gilmour in top form, showing his songwriting skills are as good in this final album as in the 70’s output of the band. The song has an anthemic tone, featuring very passionate vocals from Gilmour and a steady and strong drum beat by Mason. This anthem-like atmosphere is complemented by the piano line delivered by the great Richard Wright, which keeps the listener on edge from the first seconds of the song, expecting for the epic climax it announces.

High Hopes has plenty of highlight moments. From the sound of bells in the intro to the incredible outro, the song displays Pink Floyd's most intense and melodic elements.In the first part of the song the band creates a mysterious and eerie atmosphere that sets the stage what comes after. They gradually build tension in the mid-section, when an acoustic guitar solo takes the forefront over some march-sounding drums by Nick Mason. All of this is always accompanied in the background by an exceptional orchestration that takes over the song in its second half.

The song ends with one of the greatest outros the band has ever put out, with Gilmour giving an extremely soulful solo, in pure Pink Floyd style. It plays over the beautiful orchestration, Mason’s drumming and Wright’s piano melody, mixing all the ingredients that conform the song into a monumental coda. The song slowly fades as it ends in a melancholic but hopeful note, in the same fashion as the lyrics of the song. 

It is a fantastic song; it has a more compressed structure than some songs of the classic era that had a longer running time or where part of concept albums, still it captures in its 8 minutes all the key components of the Pink Floyd sound. It sounds as an anthem or a celebration of everything that has come before in Pink Floyd’s illustrious career, and it’s a fitting ending for one of the greatest bands of all time.