Pink Floyd - The Great Gig In The Sky Lyrics

"The Great Gig in the Sky" is the fifth track on The Dark Side of the Moon, a 1973 album by English rock band Pink Floyd.

The song features music by keyboard player Richard Wright and improvised, wordless vocals by session singer Clare Torry. It is one of only three Pink Floyd songs to feature vocals from an outside artist.

The Great Gig in the Sky was re-released as a digital single in February 10, 2023 to promote The Dark Side of the Moon 50th Anniversary box set.

The song began as a chord progression created by keyboard player Richard Wright, which was known in its early stages as "The Mortality Sequence" or "The Religion Song". During the first half of 1972 it was performed live as a simple organ instrumental, accompanied by spoken-word extracts from the Bible and snippets of speeches by Malcolm Muggeridge, a British writer known for his conservative religious views.

Various sound effects were tried over the track, including recordings of NASA astronauts communicating on space missions, but none was satisfactory. Finally, in January 1973, a couple of weeks before the album was due to be finished, the band thought of asking a female singer to "wail" over the music.

On Classic Albums: Pink Floyd - The Making of The Dark Side of the Moon, it is stated that during the recording of the album, in which death and life had been a consistent theme, the members of the band went around asking questions and recording responses from people working inside Abbey Road at the time. Among the questions, they were asked "Are you afraid of dying?".

The responses of doorman Gerry O'Driscoll and the wife of their road manager Peter Watts were used, as well as other spoken parts throughout the album ("I've always been mad", "That geezer was cruisin' for a bruisin").

(At 0:39)

And I am not frightened of dying. Any time will do, I don't mind. Why should I be frightened of dying? There's no reason for it - you've got to go sometime.

— Gerry O'Driscoll, Abbey Road Studios doorman

Almost forty years later, in a readers' poll from the same magazine, the track was selected as the second greatest vocal performance of all time behind "Bohemian Rhapsody".
-Wikipedia