Released: September 12, 1975
Links
"Wish You Were Here" official audio--https://youtu.be/hjpF8ukSrvk
TL;DR: This legendary classic rock song is one of my all-time favorites with good reason.
Unless you flatly refuse to listen to classic rock, or grew up in a house where other genres of music were emphasized, there's a high likelihood that you've heard "Wish You Were Here" at some point. The simple classic rock ballad is considered a gold standard and one of Pink Floyd's signature songs, and it's absolutely worthy of both of those characterizations.
Let's start with the production. This is an absolute masterpiece of the "slow burn" build in intensity, crescendo, and fade-out. Beginning with a pair of acoustic guitars (one given an audio effect so that it sounds as though it's coming over an AM radio band), the song slowly unfolds to add more instruments. Electric guitars, pianos, and percussion jump in for the second verse. Then on the instrumental bridge, you hear the synths for the first time. After the chorus, all the instruments slowly fade out to the original AM acoustic guitar followed by the sound of rushing wind. Put together, a nostalgic mood is set; you can almost hear the happy memories coupled with the sadness of the present state, and that's not an easy sound to pull off.
David Gilmour is lead vocalist on this track, and he does a masterful job of delivering vocals suiting the sound and subject. Given Pink Floyd's rock background, it would be easy to make the mistake of oversinging this. Instead, Gilmour dials back the power and turns up the emotion. You can HEAR the raw sadness and confusion in his delivery. It's one thing to perform with an emotion in mind, and quite another to make the listeners feel that emotion too; Gilmour decidedly accomplishes the latter here.
As for the lyrics, without context they're rather mysterious, as they're simply a collection of seemingly hypothetical questions in two verses followed by the famous chorus. However, band members Roger Waters and Gilmour collaborated to write this; Waters wrote the lyrics as an open letter to himself, while Gilmour acknowledged later that he never performed "Wish You Were Here" without remembering Pink Floyd's original lead singer, Syd Barrett. Barrett departed the group in 1968 due to his declining mental health. With the original interpretations in mind, these lyrics are incredibly poignant, and they are (intentionally) vague enough that they could apply to any situation where someone is missing from our lives.
This is about as close to a perfect song as you'll ever hear, and it has stood the test of time.
Rating: 10/10 (all-time classic)