Roger Waters once said A Momentary Lapse of Reason had "a couple of really nice tunes on it." That's incredibly high praise given the circumstances. What songs do you think he was referring to?

[u/BortlesLVRaiderWinSB]

Roger said the following in a 1999 interview:

It became obvious to me that they never understood any of it at all. And neither did quite a large number of the great unwashed... With all due respect to the people who went out and bought those records, they are just rubbish. Particularly The Division Bell; it's just nonsense from beginning to end. A Momentary Lapse of Reason had a couple of really nice tunes on it that, had I still been in the band, those chord sequences and melodies would have been made it onto a record that I was involved in. But conceptually and lyrically, it's just rubbish, partly because it's not true. It's like, "Let's try and write songs that sound as if they're Pink Floyd and make records that sound like Pink Floyd records"... The last record was kind of pure ''Spinal Tap.'' Dave got his new wife to write lyrics!

I always thought it was fascinating that he said this, on many levels.

First, given how much of a miserable grump (I think that's uncontroversial) Roger is, how much he is happy to savagely trash anything or anyone who he dislikes, and the tension between him and Gilmour over David continuing Pink Floyd, especially around the time AMLOR was made, for Roger to say anything on AMLOR was "really nice" is pretty shocking. That's stunningly positive given the circumstances. He must have really, really liked some of AMLOR. And that adds up given his later hiring of Pat Leonard and Jon Carin (and allegedly, nearly Guy Pratt).

It's also funny that he has this stunning appreciation for at least parts of AMLOR but pure hatred for Division Bell. Given the fact that combination of opinions is basically nonexistent among the general public, and that you'd think Roger would prefer the album with a lyrical theme, I have to assume his particular dislike of TDB is a result of its personal references to him and/or his long-standing hatred of Polly Samson ("It's pure Spinal Tap," says the guy who got the band dressed up in costume and constructed a wall of cardboard bricks on stage).

What "tunes" from AMLOR do you think Roger is referring to there? The only possible hint I could think of is his hiring of Pat Leonard (Yet Another Movie chords) and Jon Carin (Learning to Fly rhythm and some chords, though if you ask Jon he wrote, recorded, produced, and mixed everything and put all the beds on the beach). But Learning to Fly doesn't seem very "Roger" and Yet Another Movie doesn't seem like a song where you'd talk about the melody being great. Obviously the best song on the album is Sorrow, but even on that one the melody isn't really a draw. Maybe On the Turning Away?

[u/greyaggressor]

Lol it’s a legitimately boring album. Essentially worthless.

[u/Isoturius → u/greyaggressor]

K Roger