Released online yesterday, the Pink Floyd team created yet another new music video for the Wish You Were Here 50 campaign. This time it is for “Welcome To The Machine,” bringing together several elements, including a nod to the orb from Gerald Scarfe’s original animation and “earth” imagery such as water and desert landscapes, itself a reference to the iconography of the original album. It culminates with a shot of the monolith from the original animation wrapped in black shrink wrap in the desert. It nods not only to how the album was sold in stores 50 years ago, but also to how this entire release campaign has been built around that idea. The rollout began with all the Pink Floyd albums on Spotify and Apple Music appearing in black shrink wrap with text describing the original covers, a gag the band’s official social media pages also embraced.
A few brief band shots appear at the end, taken from Pink Floyd’s performance of “A Saucerful Of Secrets,” featured on the TV programme P1 – P wie Petersilie, broadcast on the SDR TV network in Stuttgart, Germany, on 22 July 1969, along with a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it shot from the “See Emily Play” video.
Is this an example of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”? You be the judge. In the meantime, you can always revisit Gerald Scarfe’s iconic original work.
