Tor Ormseth, Online Editor
The Wall by Pink Floyd has been one of the most successful albums of all time, with a claimed 30 million copies sold. It is possibly the best example, of a “concept album,” or an album whose songs flow from one to the next without any interruption. While it is less famous than its predecessor Dark Side of the Moon, it could be argued to have a bigger impact on today’s society; just listen to Republican candidate Donald Trump.
Trump has been known to use inflammatory language and change his positions on many topics, but one thing that has been a hallmark of his campaign is a wall on the border between the US and Mexico. Now, the simple presence of a wall in his campaign would normally not be enough to justify a correlation between him and the album, but it goes beyond that.
The most important instance of the correlation is in the sixth song in the album, “Mother.” Trump is clearly obsessed with the idea of potential terrorist attacks, what the public thinks of him, and, of course, building a wall. These are all themes in the song “Mother.” For example, some of the lyrics in the song are: “Mother do you think they’ll drop the bomb? Mother do you think they’ll like this song?… mother should I build the wall?”
Another instance is in the line “we don’t need no education,” in the fifth song, “Another Brick in the Wall Pt. 2,” which one could say reflects his attitudes toward generals in the military, experts, and educated people in general (as Trump himself put it, “I love the poorly educated”), but that pales in comparison to what comes in the next song.
As convincing as the first verse may have been, it gets even better: the first two lines of the next verse are: “Mother should I run for president… Mother should I trust the government.” The first one Trump has clearly taken seriously and the second as it was intended, an indictment against corruption. Even the last line in that verse, “…is it just a waste of time?” has been seen in his campaign, with his claims that if he loses the election, it was rigged against him.
That sums up the direct correlation to lyrics, aside from minor instances later on that could be easily passed off as coincidences. However, it is worthwhile to notice that Trump has proclaimed isolationism as the defining feature of his campaign, contrasted to the openness of his rival, Hillary Clinton, and that the theme of the album is also isolation.
There can be no doubt that Trump’s campaign is clearly linked to Pink Floyd’s The Wall.