About Wish You Were Here

"Wish You Were Here" is a song by the English rock band Pink Floyd. It was released as the title track of their 1975 album Wish You Were Here. David Gilmour and Roger Waters collaborated to write the music, and Gilmour sang the lead vocal. In 2021, the song was ranked No. 302 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. In the original album version, the song segues from "Have a Cigar" as if a radio had been tuned away from one station, through several others (including a radio play and one playing the opening of the finale movement of Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony), and finally to a new station where "Wish You Were Here" is beginning. The radio was recorded from Gilmour's car radio. He performed the intro on a twelve-string guitar, processed to sound like it was playing through an AM radio, and then overdubbed a fuller-sounding acoustic guitar solo. This passage was mixed to sound as though a guitarist were listening to the radio and playing along. As the acoustic part becomes more complex, the 'radio broadcast' fades away and Gilmour's voice enters, while the rest of the band joins in.