Comfortably Numb

Gilmour wrote the music from a wordless 1978 demo under the working title The Doctor. Waters's lyrics describe being injected with tranquilizers for stomach cramps before a 1977 show at the Philadelphia Spectrum. The chorus acoustic guitars were played by Gilmour and Lee Ritenour in a modified Nashville tuning. Ezrin and Kamen arranged the strings in New York. When Gilmour found them sloppy, by Waters's account, he rerecorded them, which led to a bitter dispute. The compromise was an orchestra in the body of the song and Gilmour's stripped mix for the final solo.

It was issued as a single on 23 June 1980 with Hey You on the B-side, in a 3:59 edit. Rolling Stone ranked it 179th on its 2021 list of 500 greatest songs.

Live and covers

At the 1980 to 1981 Wall Tour, Waters played the doctor at the base of the wall while Gilmour soloed from the top. Waters performed it at The Wall Live in Berlin in 1990 with Van Morrison. At Live 8 in 2005 the band arranged it almost identically to the studio version. Gilmour toured it with David Bowie in 2006 and with Benedict Cumberbatch in 2016. The Scissor Sisters took a version to number 10 in Britain in 2004, and Body Count recorded it in 2024 with Gilmour on guitar.