Wish You Were Here (Pink Floyd album) still sounds unconvincing in its ponderous sincerity and displays a critical lack of imagination in all departments." However, Robert Christgau wrote in "The Village Voice": "The music is not only simple and attractive, with the synthesizer used mostly for texture and the guitar breaks for comment, but it actually achieves some of the symphonic dignity (and cross-referencing) that "The Dark Side of the Moon" simulated so ponderously." He later wrote: "My favorite Pink Floyd album has always been "Wish You Were Here", and you know why? It has soul, that's why – it's Roger Waters's lament for Syd, not my
Wish You Were Here (Pink Floyd song) "...really good. All bits of it are really, really good. I'm very happy about it." David Gilmour has playfully called "Wish You Were Here" "a very simple country song" and stated that "because of its resonance and the emotional weight it carries, it is one of our best songs." "Wish You Were Here" was recorded at Abbey Road Studios, as part of the sessions for the entire album. A noted part of the song was a planned contribution by Stéphane Grappelli. A jazz violinist popular at the time and well known for his collaborations with Yehudi Menuhin, both violinists were