Great idea Martin ! Pink Floyd is my favorite band, but I'll admit that after the initial discovery and exploration of their whole discography, I pretty much settled on the songs I liked and never listened to the other ones again. That's the case for 6 of the songs here, with only two match-ups featuring two songs that are still on my main playlist. But hey, maybe I can rediscover some forgotten gems here.
1. The Final Cut is an album I feel conflicted about. It's like The Wall's ugly stepchild: same sensibilites and inspiration, but less coherence and even more self-indulgence. There's definitely some great stuff in there (When the Tigers Broke Free, The Fletcher Memorial Home), but it's not a favorite of mine overall, though it's the last Pink Floyd album I'd qualify as "good". Your Possible Pasts is fine and all, but again, it feels like a song that wasn't quite good enough to make it into The Wall. I'm not actually as big a fan of Comfortably Numb as most, but this is not close at all (in that I wouldn't put it in the top 10, maybe not even top 20 for PF songs), but it's still an easy choice: Comfortably Numb.
2. Obscured by Clouds is generally underrated, but Burning Bridges is not a song I remembered, probably because it sounds a lot like Free Four, just not as good. Still, it's a nice one, I might get it back in rotation. I feel pretty similarly about the Syd one here too, which is like an Astronomy Domine that never lifts off. Tough choice here... I'll go with Burning Bridges.
3. Don't think I'd actually heard Paintbox before. It's a pretty cool, quirky one, that doesn't get too crazy and dissonant but has that lovely psychedelic undercurrent nonetheless. I don't really think of Part 3 as a distinct song anyway, so Paintbox it is.
4. This is where we get into a bit of trouble. The Wall is my second favorite album (after DSOTM), but it works much better as an album than a collection of songs. I have a feeling I'm going to be voting against The Wall a lot just because of the "song v song" structure, when it doesn't really reflect how I feel. That being said, I do like Lucifer Sam a lot, even though it's only the 5th or 6th best song in Piper.
5. Mother is perhaps not the best single in The Wall, but it's the song the whole album revolves around. Take Up Thy Stethoscope And Walk is very cool, but also in the middle when it comes to Piper (Interstellar Overdrive manages the "psychedelic freakout" Martin describes much better), and I'm not voting against Mother.
6. The worst song on my favorite album ever (and another one that suffers out of context) vs a nice ballad from More I had completely forgotten... but it is nice. Mmmmh. Very tough choice, I'll got with Green is the Colour, because On the Run, though it's excellent in its context just doesn't works at all as a song, and the structure of the tournament here leads me to consider things that way.
7. Well now that's just cruel. Eclipse is my ringtone and what I'm voting for: it's a glorious culmination to Brain Damage that still works gangbusters on its own (but unlike Martin, I loooove list-type lyrics, love them)... but it hurts to eliminate Summer '68 so early. Atom Heart Mother is the great PF album most people don't know about, and this song is one of the big reasons why.
8. Yeah, I didn't remember Heart Beat, Pig Meat at all... and it's ok I guess, but Goodbye, Cruel World takes that one easily.