"Time"

I've just finished reading Nick Mason's entertaining history of Pink Floyd. Despite being an international rock superstar, he's so quintessentially English in his modesty, his brushing aside of any plaudits for what he has achieved.
And reading his account of the creation of the "Dark Side of the Moon" album, I hope I began to understand a little about the dynamics of this most unusual group: the Floyd was always a one-man show, whether it was Syd Barrett in the early days, or Roger Waters latterly. Their respective creative visions, be they lyrical or musical or both, really drove the group.
After Syd was sacked, Roger Waters' concerns and visions began to take over -- culminating eventually in the pseudo-solo album "The Final Cut" -- and the first sign that he really had assumed control was the "Dark Side" album, where the entire work has the sort of wholeness that can only be achieved when one person's thought processes are determining the content.
What this album achieved, however, was a perfect balance between Waters' lyrical thrust and the brilliant musicianship of David Gilmour and Richard Wright. I've already written about what is to me the finest track on this record, but "Time" comes a close second.
The simplicity of the opening minutes -- a wonderful combination of clock and heartbeat as a drumbeat, simple guitar notes and Mason's clear, spare drums -- takes some beating, but the lyric is what matters here. It's simple, almost schoolboyish in fact, but it's inescapable and that's what I like: "And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking/Racing around to come up behind you again/The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older/Shorter of breath and one day closer to death."
Sometimes it's the simple things that make the biggest noise. This song's one of them.