10 Best Covers Of Pink Floyd Songs

Photo: National Archives at College Park, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Pink Floyd is one of rock history’s most successful, beloved, and influential bands. Their best-known album, The Dark Side of the Moon, has spent a record 996 nonconsecutive weeks on the Billboard 200. That’s more than nineteen years. One of the kings of progressive rock, Pink Floyd inspired a lot of cover versions from bands that were clearly fans. Here’s a look at the 10 best covers of Pink Floyd songs.

# 10 – One Hot Second: Wish This Were Beer

We start our look at the 10 best covers of Pink Floyd songs with a heartfelt and rather musical parody of the Pink Floyd classic “Wish You Were Here.” Instead of echoing the original’s sense of absence often associated with Syd Barrett, One Hot Second’s version looks at the horror of office Christmas parties. It even has a bunch of crowd noises, as if echoing Pink Floyd’s use of sound effects throughout their songs. The guitarist does a perfect mimic of the acoustic guitar part.

# 9 – The Jesus and Mary Chain: Vegetable Man

The Jesus and Mary Chain not only tackles this obscure Pink Floyd song but wrestles it to the ground and makes it cry, “Uncle.” The original 1967 recording was pure psychedelia, with vocal reverbs and sound effects, but had a touch of whimsy to it. In this cover version, the Jesus and Mary Chain gives it buzz-saw punk guitar and screams defiantly about being the Vegetable Man. This cover version first appeared in 1984 on the B-side of their debut single, Upside Down. The obscure beginning only fits since the original was an unreleased song. For decades, you could only hear it on Pink Floyd bootlegs before the band’s recording was officially released in 2016.

# 8 – Gregorian: Comfortably Numb

This is a faithful version, instrumentally, except for a fiddle replacing some guitar work. None of the lyrics are changed. However, that’s where the similarity ends. The vocals are presented in a Gregorian chant-inspired style rather than as a conventional rock performance. This gives the beloved Pink Floyd song an eerie quality as if all suffering rock stars from the past, present, and future simultaneously sing their pain. This cover appears on the 2006 album Masters of Chant: Chapter V.

# 7 – Metric: Nobody Home

One of the softest songs on Pink Floyd’s The Wall is a mournful little number about a touring rock star reflecting on his life as he unsuccessfully tries to phone his wife. Metric takes this song and strips it to the bone. Gone are the whispery voices, sounds of ringing telephones, strings, and echoes at the end of lines. Metric takes Jimmy Shaw’s voice and piano, making “Nobody Home” even more depressing yet more beautiful than the original. None of the lyrics are changed. The cover was included as a bonus track with some editions of Metric’s 2009 album Fantasies and was later included on the 2010 Fantasies (Spotify Covers) EP.

# 6 – Shadows Fall: Welcome to the Machine

Listening to this next item in our list of top 10 Pink Floyd cover songs, you have to wonder if the members of Pink Floyd were secret head-bangers. It didn’t take much to change this prog-rock classic into a heavy-duty version by the metal band Shadows Fall. It begins with a lovely, ominous beginning and rumbles on from there. The vocals are faithful to the original. Though heavy with synths and a driving, relentless beat, the tune is left mostly unchanged. This cover version appears on the 2002 album The Art of Balance.

# 5 – David Bowie: See Emily Play

“See Emily Play” was pretty trippy for 1967 when it first appeared, but David Bowie takes the weirdness to another level with his cover version. David Bowie loved to distort his voice in the studio and indulged that here. He also added a mountain of special effects, which drown out the vocals at times, yet it still sounds right for a Pink Floyd song since that band used a lot of special effects and vocal distortions. This cover version was released initially on David Bowie’s 1973 album of cover versions, Pin Ups.

# 4 – The Hotrats: Bike

This is a light-hearted cover of this trippy, borderline creepy, little-known love song by Pink Floyd. The vocals on this cover sound very much like Marc Bolan. It’s much easier to understand the lyrics here than in the original. This is about as special-effects heavy as the original. This cover version appeared on The Hotrats’ 2010 covers album, Turn Ons.

# 3 – Foo Fighters: Have a Cigar

Shades of what would be The Wall appear in this cynical song about the rock music industry on Pink Floyd’s other masterpiece, Wish You Were Here. Foo Fighters takes the original even more sinister by turning it into a driving stormtrooper-like march with pounding drums, screaming lyrics, and roaring guitars. Although all the special effects are removed and the instrumentation changed, drummer and singer Taylor Hawkins keeps one key vocal touch the same—the long, drawn-out “yeah” at the end, sung precisely like in the Pink Floyd original. This originally appeared as a B-side to the 1999 single Learn to Fly.

# 2 – Of Mice & Men: Money

This is one of those covers that does not play too much with the original tune and keeps all of the original lyrics but has a distinctive flavor that makes it distinctly different from the original. Of Mice & Men hammer into this classic, making it even more ominous and cynical than Pink Floyd’s original. It has a fantastic use of silence to hammer some points home. It does not have samples of coins and cash registers but a digital coin sound as if the listener had just made an online purchase to listen to the rest of the song. This cover version came out on the 2018 album Defy.

# 1 – Capital Cities (featuring Tupac Shakur): Breathe

For several reasons, this is the most unique tune in our list of top 10 covers of Pink Floyd songs. First, it heavily samples the original “Breathe,” mixes it with a sample of Tupac Shakur’s verse from Scarface’s 1997 song “Smile,” and sets it all to a funky beat you can dance to. And we never thought we would be able to dance to a Pink Floyd tune without the use of heavy pharmaceuticals, but you can dance drug-free to this for three minutes and forty-seven toe-tapping seconds. Capital Cities released the cover online in 2012; it later appeared on the band’s 2025 collection A Hurricane of Frowns.

Read More: Top 25 Pink Floyd Songs