Wish You Were Here (Pink Floyd album) "It's an album I can listen to for pleasure, and there aren't many Floyd albums that I can." Gilmour shares this view: "I for one would have to say that it is my favourite album, the "Wish You Were Here" album. The end result of all that, whatever it was, definitely has left me an album I can live with very very happily. I like it very much." Pink Floyd and their manager Steve O'Rourke had been dissatisfied with the efforts of EMI's US label Capitol Records, and "Wish You Were Here" was Pink Floyd's first album with Columbia Records,
Wish You Were Here (Pink Floyd album) into the lyrics for "Shine On You Crazy Diamond", a tribute to Syd Barrett, whose mental breakdown had forced him to leave the group seven years earlier. Barrett is fondly recalled with lines such as "Remember when you were young, you shone like the sun" and "You reached for the secret too soon, you cried for the moon". "Wish You Were Here" is also a critique of the music business. "Shine On" crosses seamlessly into "Welcome to the Machine", a song that begins with an opening door (described by Waters as a symbol of musical discovery and progress betrayed by