Amused to Death

Amused to Death
Studio album by Roger Waters
Released	7 September 1992
Recorded	1988–1992
Genre	Rock, progressive rock
Length	72:45
Label	Columbia
Producer	Roger Waters, Nick Griffiths, Patrick Leonard
Professional reviews
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Roger Waters chronology
The Wall - Live in Berlin (1990) Amused to Death (1992) In the Flesh - Live (2000)

Amused to Death is a concept album by former Pink Floyd member Roger Waters, released in 1992.

Overview

Amused to Death further explores Waters' disillusionment with modern Western society, focusing specifically on the influence of television and the mass media. The album was inspired by the book Amusing Ourselves to Death, a critique of television and its related culture by Neil Postman.

Like every studio album Roger Waters has done since The Dark Side of the Moon, Amused to Death is a concept album. This one is organized loosely around the idea of a monkey randomly switching channels on a television, but explores numerous political and social themes, including critiques of the First Gulf War in "The Bravery of Being Out of Range" and "Perfect Sense", in which famed sportscaster Marv Albert narrates a war as if it were a basketball game, and a massive choir sings their "global anthem":

Can't you see
It all makes perfect sense
Expressed in dollars and cents
Pounds, shillings, and pence

The song "Watching TV" (a duet with Don Henley) explores the influence of mass media on the Chinese protests for democracy in Tiananmen Square.

The album is mixed in QSound to enhance the spatial feel of the audio, and the many sound effects on the album -- rifle range ambience, sleighbells, cars, planes, distant horses, chirping crickets, and dogs -- all make use of the 3-D facility. A limited "MasterSound" edition was also made.

Amused to Death reached #8 on the UK Albums Chart, Waters' first Top 10 in his homeland, and a career high of #21 on the Billboard 200, aided by "What God Wants, Part I", which hit #4 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock Tracks chart in 1992.

There was no tour in support of this record, although Roger has performed several songs from it on his recent In the Flesh and Dark Side of the Moon Live tours.

Quotes

"The album title came from a short book by Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death, which is about the history of the media, particularly as it relates to political communication—i.e., how things have changed since such works as Lincoln's speeches were made available for the general public to read."

"And I had at one point this rather depressing image of some alien creature seeing the death of this planet and coming down in their spaceships and sniffing around and finding all our skeletons sitting around our TV sets and trying to work out why it was that our end came before its time, and they come to the conclusion that we amused ourselves to death."

"Things coalesced slowly as I became more and more interested or obsessed, pick your word, with the inordinately powerful and all-encompassing effect that television seems to have on the human race. My general view is that television when it becomes commercialized and profit-based tends to trivialize and dehumanize our lives."

"So I became interested in this idea of television as a two-edged sword, that it can be a great medium for spreading information and understanding between peoples, but when it's a tool of our slavish adherence to the incumbent philosophy that the free market is the god that we should all bow down to, it's a very dangerous medium. Because it's so powerful."

"I think the motivation is at the root of its current evil, i.e. it's because they have to compete in an open marketplace that their standards get reduced so the programming tends to end up as the cheapest possible saleable item. I don't believe that wanting to beat the opposition makes for good programming, but it's an ideology that is still rigidly adhered to."

— Roger Waters, speaking about the album to the LA Times, September, 1992

Track listing

1. "The Ballad of Bill Hubbard" – 4:19
2. "What God Wants, Part I" – 6:00
3. "Perfect Sense, Part I" – 4:16
4. "Perfect Sense, Part II" – 2:50
5. "The Bravery of Being Out of Range" – 4:43
6. "Late Home Tonight, Part I" – 4:00
7. "Late Home Tonight, Part II" – 2:13
8. "Too Much Rope" – 5:47
9. "What God Wants, Part II" – 3:41
10. "What God Wants, Part III" – 4:08
11. "Watching TV" – 6:07
12. "Three Wishes" – 6:50
13. "It's a Miracle" – 8:30
14. "Amused to Death" – 9:06

All songs written by Roger Waters.

Personnel

• Roger Waters - vocals (all tracks except 1), bass (tracks 2 and 13), synthesizers (tracks 2 and 4), guitar (tracks 5, 11 and 14)
• Patrick Leonard - keyboards (all tracks except 6 and 7), percussion programming (track 1), choir arrangement (tracks 2, 9, 10, 11 and 13), vocals (track 4), acoustic piano (tracks 11 and 13), Hammond organ (track 5), synthetisers (tracks 5 and 13)
• Jeff Beck - guitar (tracks 1, 2, 10, 11, 12, 13 and 14)
• Randy Jackson - bass (tracks 2 and 9)
• Graham Broad - drums (all tracks except 1, 5, 11 and 13), percussion (tracks 6 and 7)
• Luis Conte - percussion (all tracks except 2, 5, 9, 11, 13 and 14)
• Geoff Whitehorn - guitar (tracks 2, 8, 10 and 14)
• Andy Fairweather Low - guitar (tracks 2, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11 and 12), vocals (tracks 6 and 7)
• Tim Pierce - guitar (tracks 2, 5, 9 and 12)
• B.J. Cole - guitar (tracks 3 and 4)
• Steve Lukather - guitar (tracks 3, 4 and 8)
• Rick DiFonso - guitar (tracks 3 and 4)
• Bruce Gaitsch - guitar (tracks 3 and 4)
• James Johnson - bass (all tracks except 1, 2, 5, 9 and 11)
• Brian Macleod - snare (tracks 3 and 4), hi-hat (tracks 3 and 4)
• John Pierce - bass (track 5)
• Denny Fongheiser - drums (track 5)
• Steve Sidwell - cornet (tracks 6 and 7)
• John Patitucci - bass (track 11)
• Guo Yi & the Peking Brothers - dulcimer, lute, zhen, oboe, bass (track 11)
• John "Rabbit" Bundrick - Hammond organ (track 12)
• Jeff Porcaro - drums (track 13)
• Marv Albert - vocals (track 4)
• Katie Kissoon - vocals (tracks 2, 8, 9, 12 and 14)
• Doreen Chanter - vocals (tracks 2, 8, 9, 12 and 14)
• N'Dea Davenport - vocals (track 2)
• Natalie Jackson - vocals (tracks 2 and 5)
• P.P. Arnold - vocals (tracks 3 and 4)
• Lynn Fiddmont-Linsey - vocals (track 5)
• Jessica Leonard - vocals (track 8)
• Jordan Leonard - vocals (track 8)
• Don Henley - vocals (track 11)
• Jon Joyce - vocals (track 13)
• Stan Laurel - vocals (track 13)
• Jim Haas - vocals (track 13)
• Rita Coolidge - vocals (track 14)
• Alf Razzell - vocals (tracks 1 and 14)

Charts

Album – UK

Album – Billboard (North America)

Singles – Billboard (North America)

External links

• Song-by-song analysis of the album