1979 · Behind the Songs
A school choir, a disco beat, and the biggest single of the band’s career.
“Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2” is the hit single from The Wall, the double album Pink Floyd released in November 1979. Roger Waters wrote the song as part of the album’s story of isolation; the disco-inflected beat came at the suggestion of David Gilmour and producer Bob Ezrin, who heard a hit in it.
The track’s defining feature is the children’s choir from Islington Green School in London, chanting the song’s famous refrain. Released as a single in November 1979, it spent five weeks at No. 1 in Britain and four weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1980 — the band’s only chart-topper in either country. In 1980, South Africa’s apartheid government banned the song after it was adopted by protesting Black schoolchildren.
What to listen for: the choir set against the four-on-the-floor beat, and Gilmour’s stinging guitar solo cutting through it all.