Pink Floyd 22: 8-Tracks

The 8-track tape music format dominated the industry for a few decades. These bulky plastic cartridges split an album’s program into four stereo segments, but they didn’t always match the vinyl sequence, or even the sides. In order to cut down on excess silence and conserve actual tape, songs were often shuffled, many times in baffling combinations. From time to time a rare mix would sneak through, but for the most part, the 8-track’s appeal was more from convenience and mobility than pristine fidelity: cars had players, and portable players were available in a variety of designs. By comparison, the cassette’s smaller size was that much more fragile, and the thin tape could threaten to unwind and stretch if you weren’t careful. Even those took liberties with album sequencing, but that’s not important right now. Eventually people decided it was a lot easier to dub albums and songs from the radio onto a cassette, which was just one of the factors that helped hasten 8-track’s demise.

Like most kings of the high school parking lot, Pink Floyd sold a lot of albums on 8-track, and a new compilation of favorites that likely got a lot of play in that format appeared for no real reason, on the heels of the 50th anniversary of Wish You Were Here and its various expansions. Despite the hyphen, 8-Tracks offered exactly that: eight tracks from the ‘70s sequenced and mixed by Steven Wilson, and something of a mutant cousin of A Collection Of Great Dance Songs.

Like that album, it begins with “One Of These Days”, only this time the wind fades into “Wots… Uh The Deal”—a wonderful song, to be sure, but not the most expected choice for a “hits” album. That’s soon taken over by the coins and cash register of “Money”, this time the original track and not the rerecorded version. “Another Brick In The Wall, Part 2” is also the extended single mix, with the extra bars at the top and with the schoolmaster’s ranting over the end. “Wish You Were Here” begins from the tuned radio, and its wind at the end turns into the ticking clocks of “Time”. The “Breathe” reprise conveniently ends on the same chord that opens “Comfortably Numb”, and that fades into the sheep sounds to preface “Pigs On The Wing”.

And that right there would seem to be the big deal of this album, from the title to the concept. This is the version of the song that appeared on the 8-track version of Animals—both verses, separated by solo played by auxiliary touring guitarist Snowy White. Why this did not appear in 2018 on that album’s sonic and visual overhaul made no sense, but here it is now. Beyond that, everybody who cares already knows these songs, and might even be tired of them.

Pink Floyd 8-Tracks (2026)—3