Robbed hit of the week 9/28/15 - Pink Floyd's "Learning To Fly"...

"Learning To Fly" - Pink Floyd
from the album A Momentary Lapse Of Reason (1987)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #70

This week's "robbed hit" comes from the progressive art rock band Pink Floyd, who had started out as a psychedlic act fronted by the eccentric lead singer/guitarist Syd Barrett in the mid-60's in London. With band originators Roger Waters, Richard Wright, and Nick Mason, they released a pair of successful singles, with "Arnold Layne" scoring them their first top-40 hit in the UK at #20, then "See Emily Play" doing even better at #6.  With that behind them, earning a deal for a full-length record, the group recorded their debut album Pipers At The Gates Of Dawn, which came out in 1967. Though it made the top-10 on the albums chart in Britain, the "hits" dried up, as Barrett's mental state deteriorated rapidly to the point of him not being able to either play or promote the band he's leading. That turmoil caused Barrett to be joined and eventually replaced by David Gilmour, who took over as the lead singer and guitarist, while Waters assumed the majority of the songwriting. By the time their second album, A Saucerful Of Secrets, was released, it was a mish-mash of Barrett-assisted tracks and ones solely with Gilmour. However, with that effort, as well as their next four sets More, Ummagumma, Atom Heart Mother and Meddle, their music became much more experimental and unedited, and while Atom Heart topped the albums chart in the UK, they weren't appearing on radio at all. In 1972, as they were recording their next studio album, the band contributed the soundtrack to the French movie La Vallee', called Obscured By Clouds. A song from the record, "Free Four", hit the top-40 in the Netherlands and got rock radio airplay in America. What they were working on at that time would become Pink Floyd's masterpiece, Dark Side Of The Moon, which came out in 1973. Produced by band with engineer and future art-rock god Alan Parsons, the album was a tight distillation of everything the band was evolving into at that point, and the anti-greed anthem "Money" became an unexpected hit reaching #13 on the American pop chart, while the album itself spent years on Billboard's Top Albums chart.

After this huge success, instead of going forward with a more mainstream sound, the band actually retreated more to their experimental ways, with the more progressive albums Wish You Were Here (inspired by Barrett) and Animals selling big but not resonating with songs on the radio. That changed in 1979, as they released their grand concept album The Wall. Conceived by Waters as a coming-of-age story peppered with war fatigue and hysteria a la  Barrett, the titular "Another Brick In The Wall (Part II)", a disco-fied anthem against authority that somehow beat the 'disco backlash' of the year, spent a month atop the pop chart in the U.S. as well as France, Germany, and their native Britain. The record eventually spawned a movie starring the Boomtown Rats' (and future Live Aid king) Bob Geldof. Amidst this massive success, the band was completely fractured at this point, with Wright only in as a hired hand for touring, and Waters and Gilmour not even speaking to each other as the following album, The Final Cut, shut Gilmour out completely songwriting-wise. While the track "Not Now John" became the Floyd's first hit on the new Mainstream Rock radio chart in Billboard, it got so bad that after both Waters and Gilmour released solo album, Waters tried to dissolve the band altogether, leading Waters to take court action and in so take over as the de facto leader of Pink Floyd.

In 1987, bringing back Wright with Mason, Gilmour headed up the recording of their first post-Waters album, A Momentary Lapse Of Reason. Released to a fanbase clamoring for any new material under the name (whether Waters or Gilmour were attached to it), the set was among the biggest rock releases of the year. The first single, "Learning To Fly", was an uplifting, concise, yet not run-of-the-mill song that aspired to be the antithesis of the gloom that had been plaguing the Floyd for years...

While "Learning To Fly" topped the Mainstream Rock Tracks radio chart in Billboard for three weeks in the summer of 1987, the single stalled all the way down at #70 on the mag's pop chart. The song went to #10 in New Zealand, and #34 in neighboring Australia.

While another track from the album, "On The Turning Away", also topped the rock chart, pop radio ignored the rest of the set. It took another seven years for another Pink Floyd studio album, and again with one track, "Take It Back", peaking down at #73 on the Hot 100, the radio success was limited to rock stations. Another cut, "Keep Talking", went to #1 on the rock chart as well. Waters did reunite with the other three for the Live 8 charity concert, but that would end up being a one-off. Wright passed away in 2008, and Gilmour and Mason used Wright's recordings for what may be the final Floyd album, The Endless River in 2014. Mostly an instrumental work, the song "Louder Than Words" popped on to the Triple-A rock radio list at #29.

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Here's Pink Floyd performing the song live on the Delicate Sound Of Thunder tour promoting this album in 1987...

...and on their Division Bell show in 1994 that would go on to be their #1 Pulse album...