From rappers to their fellow rock stars to musical composers, Pink Floyd’s catalog has been reworked countless times over the years. The group’s experimental tendencies have resulted in many meandering soundscapes primed and ready for interpolation. From Salt-N-Pepa to Wiz Khalifa, find four songs that you didn’t know borrowed from Pink Floyd below.
Videos by American Songwriter
1. “The Brick Track Versus Gitty Up (Rickidy Raw Hide Radio Mix)” (Salt-N-Pepa feat Rufus Blaq)
Sampled “Another Brick in the Wall (Part II)“
Salt-N-Pepa interpolated the central guitar riff in Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall (Part II)” into their “The Brick Track Versus Gitty Up (Rickidy Raw Hide Radio Mix).” The song is a remix of their 1997 release “Gitty Up” and acted as the lead single for their greatest hits album, The Best of Salt-N-Pepa.
2. The Phantom of the Opera (Sarah Brightman and Steve Harley)
Sampled “Echoes”
This one is slightly controversial. In 1992, Roger Waters asserted that Andrew Lloyd Webber had plagiarised the title track of his smash hit musical The Phantom of the Opera with a sequence from Pink Floyd’s track “Echoes.”
“Yeah, the beginning of that bloody Phantom song is from “Echoes”…I couldn’t believe it when I heard it,” Waters once said. “It probably is actionable. It really is! But I think that life’s too long to bother with suing Andrew fucking Lloyd Webber.” Lloyd Webber has not commented on the claim.
Sampled might be a loose terminology here but, there are certainly similarities between the two tracks.
3. “Between My Legs” (Rufus Wainwright)
Sampled “Echoes”
Towards the end of Rufus Wainwright’s “Between My Legs,” he samples the hook of Pink Floyd’s “Echoes.” Released on his record Release The Stars, Wainwright wrote this song about a boy he was infatuated with. “It’s a fantasy about being able to save your object of desire when the apocalypse comes, and bring him to some sort of hidden paradise,” he once said.
4. B.A.R. (Wiz Khalifa)
Sampled “Keep Talking”
Wiz Khalifa borrowed the intro from Pink Floyd’s “Keep Talking” for his song “B.A.R.” The track comes from Khalifa’s seventh mixtape. The atmospheric Pink Floyd track is perfect for interpolation. Layered underneath a bumping 808, it feels far more suited for hip-hop than prog-rock.
(Photo by Doug McKenzie/Getty Images)
