Pink Floyd is an English rock band founded in London in 1965. Gaining support as a psychedelic pop group, they have been recognized for their elaborate compositions, sound experiments, philosophical lyrics and elaborate live performances. . Pink Floyd were one of the first British psychedelic groups and are credited with influential genres such as neo-progressive rock and ambient.
Pink Floyd was founded by students Syd Barrett (guitar, vocals), Nick Mason (drums), Roger Waters (bass guitar, vocals) and Richard Wright (keyboards, vocals). Under Barrett's leadership, they released two singles on the charts and the successful debut album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (1967). Guitarist and vocalist David Gilmour joined in December 1967; Barrett left in April 1968 due to deteriorating mental health. Waters became the principal songwriter and thematic leader, developing the concepts behind the pinnacle of the band's critical and commercial success with the albums The Dark Side of the Moon (1973), Wish You Were Here (1975), Animals (1977) and The Wall (1979) . Waters' musical film based on Pink Floyd's The Wall album The Wall (1982) won two BAFTA awards.
Following personal tensions, Wright left Pink Floyd in 1979 and then Waters in 1985. Gilmour and Mason continued as Pink Floyd, which Wright later joined. The band released two more albums - A Momentary Lapse of Reason (1987) and The Division Bell (1994). In 2005, everyone except Barrett met again to play a one-off event at the Live 8 global event. Barrett died in 2006 and Wright in 2008. Pink Floyd's latest studio album, The Endless River (2014), was based on unreleased material. from the Division Bell recording sessions.
By 2013, Pink Floyd had sold over 250 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling music artists of all time. The Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall are some of the best-selling albums of all time and have both been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. Four of the band's albums reached the top of the charts in the United States or Great Britain, and the singles produced were "See Emily Play" (1967), "Money" (1973), the three-part composition "Another Brick in the Wall" (1979), "Not Now John" (1983), "On the Turning Away" (1987) and "High Hopes" (1994). The band also composed several soundtracks for the films. They were inducted into the US Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996 and into the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2005. In 2008, King Charles XVI Gustaf of Sweden presented Pink Floyd with the Polar Music Prize for contributions to contemporary music.