| "It Would Be So Nice" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Single by Pink Floyd | ||||
| B-side | Julia Dream | |||
| Released | March 12, 1968 | |||
| Recorded | February, 1968 | |||
| Genre | Psychedelic rock, psychedelic pop[1] | |||
| Length | 3:47 | |||
| Label | Columbia (EMI) (UK) | |||
| Writer(s) | Richard Wright | |||
| Producer | Norman Smith | |||
| Pink Floyd singles chronology | ||||
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"It Would Be So Nice" is a 1968 song by the rock band, Pink Floyd, written by Richard Wright.[2][3] It was released as the fourth single by the group. The song was left out of the 1971 collection Relics and prior to the release of The Early Singles in 1992 with the box set Shine On it was only available on the Masters of Rock compilation. Its B-side, "Julia Dream," was written by bassist Roger Waters and was also re-released on The Early Singles.
According to a newspaper story published in 1968, there are two versions of the original single with slightly different lyrics. The story goes that the first lyric had a passing reference to the British newspaper, the Evening Standard. This was said to be banned by the BBC because of a strict no-advertising policy which did not allow the mention of any product by name. The group was forced to spend additional time and expense to record a special version for the BBC which changed the lyric to "Daily Standard." This version is the only one that has been reissued on LP and CD. It is unknown how many of the "Evening Standard" discs, if any, actually exist. Despite the added publicity the single got very little airplay and failed to chart.
In The Dark Side of the Moon: The Making of the Pink Floyd Masterpiece, John Harris writes about the song:
The first recorded work [Pink Floyd] released in the wake of Syd Barrett's exit was Richard Wright's almost unbearably whimsical 'It Would Be So Nice,' a single whose lightweight strain of pop-psychedelia—akin, perhaps, to the music of such faux-counterculturalists as the Hollies and the Monkees—rendered it a non-event that failed to trouble the British charts; as Roger Waters later recalled, 'No one ever heard it because it was such a lousy record.' Waters' own compositional efforts, however, were hardly more promising. 'Julia Dream', the single's B-side, crystallized much the same problem: though the band evidently wanted to maintain the Syd Barrett aesthetic, their attempts sounded hopelessly lightweight.[4]
Nick Mason was even more vocal than Waters in his dislike for the song, referring to it as "fucking awful".
A cover version of the song appears on Captain Sensible's second solo album "The Power of Love."
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