Syd Barrett’s Albums Ranked from Worst to Best

Syd Barrett’s career as a recording artist was as brief as it was inspired. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, the quality of the music can be more easily appraised. Beyond his growing legend, the musicians who’ve taken an active interest in Barrett’s work have tended to be some quirky, experimental indie and alternative acts. It then seems only appropriate that we count down the best and the worst of the singer’s brief, often stellar career.

Here are the albums Syd Barrett contributed to, ranked worst to best.

Syd Barrett’s Albums Ranked from worst to best

Opel (1988)

Not so much a studio album as an odds & ends collection, “Opel” features songs recorded during Barrett’s most fruitful period. Of course, the best selection of those songs found their way onto Barrett’s two 1970 solo releases. This record has its charm nonetheless.

Upon release, EMI was quick to point out that the artist had presented his approval. Still, it’s clear that the decision to compile this record stems, especially, from the public’s growing fascination with the former Pink Floyd frontman, who by now had entirely retreated from the public eye and had ceased any recording activity (to our knowledge).

The Barrett myth, however, was built on a solid foundation. In the decades that followed his brief foray into rock music, nobody had been quite able to replicate the sound or pin down its origins. Many had either deliberately tried. Some that didn’t, but provided similar facets to their music (Roky Erikson, Daniel Johnston, Half Japanese, Kevin Ayers) were instantly, perhaps lazily, compared to Barrett.

A Saucerful of Secrets (1968)

By 1968, the experimental contingent of British music was beginning to pull together every single one of its ideas into the complex styling of what the press would christen prog rock. Pink Floyd would be heading in that direction as well, with Barrett soon to be out of the picture, but not before they attempted an earnest follow-up to their well-received debut.

While it’s certainly a compelling listen, “A Saucerful of Secrets” tries to approximate the innocent sonic detours of its predecessor. What is missing, as Floyd’s members and management easily remarked, is a bunch of great Syd Barrett songs. So many, in fact, that songs like Vegetable Man, were skipped for inclusion despite their great reputation with fans.

Instead, he provides only one composition, “Jugband Blues”, easily the most interesting cut on the record, and is featured sporadically on a few other songs. By this time, David Gilmour, Syd’s childhood friend, was stepping in to help/replace the former frontman.

I love “A Saucerful of Secrets”. But I can also appreciate white members of Pink Floyd, the record label, and the public would start to feel like the band couldn’t survive without Barrett. In fact, without Barrett’s charisma and unusual compositions, Floyd is reduced to producing psychedelic noise. Not much of it is focused, in my opinion. However, listen hard enough and you can trace the start of the likes of “Echoes” or “Dark Side of the Moon” in there.

While this was going on, the other members of the band were learning to write songs. Their struggles with grasping the basic techniques are painfully obvious at times. Barrett would be removed from the band soon after. He would record a handful of albums individually and toy with the idea of creating another group.

Floyd would float on the seas of sonic noodling for a while yet, before Roger Waters would, in fact, learn to write songs, really good songs, as a matter of fact, depart from the band’s original calling card and become one of the most consistent stadium-fillers in the known galaxy.

Barrett (1970)

Syd released not one, but two albums in 1970, the most productive year of his career. Once again, “Barrett“, is assembled from various recording sessions that had been directed by David Gilmour and Richard Wright, his former Pink Floyd allies.

If Syd Barrett was as difficult to work with at the time as legend would suggest, it’s hard to tell by looking at his output in 1970. Recording sessions and radio appearances were booked and attended, songs were written, and two albums were released.

The music itself makes no plea for commercial acceptance, much to the record label’s chagrin. There are moments, such as on “Baby Lemonade”, when a hint of a pop chorus appears. But such ideas are quickly chased away. Barrett may not have achieved the success of the early Pink Floyd albums. However, there is little evidence that he chased it. f

But, it does not sound wholly different from Pink Floyd’s early years and the band’s first few singles, which sparked EMI’s interest in supporting Syd Barrett as a solo performer in the first place. The label had failed to find their British-born Brian Wilson, as they had sought to do, but this record is as eerily compelling as anything that the original Beach Boy created.

The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (1967)

In 1967’s London, the Pink Floyd (later they shortened the name) was the wildest thing on English soil. Syd Barrett was the architect of the controlled sonic and visual chaos that magazines had dubbed psychedelic rock.

No serial rock experimenters were as ambitious as Floyd. But, while other bands only had bravery constructed on strong narcotics on their side, this group, made up of middle-class teenagers, benefited from Barrett’s singular songwriting voice. His innocent fairy-stories and pop songwriting chops made the young man’s reporting appear on par with John Lennon, the rock wordsmith of the day, with whom Pink Floyd shared studio space while recording “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn“.

Piper had a profound effect. And, unlike other bands of the era who had to wait for their recognition to arrive, Pink Floyd was heralded almost overnight as the leaders of a new era. By this stage seemingly every group, from The Rolling Stones to bubblegum gum pop acts, had incorporated psychedelia into their numbers. For most, Syd Barrett was the reference point. Naturally, his subsequent separation from the limelight and rock star imagery only served to increase his legend colossally.

Depending on the issue you’ll be lucky to get, the record should contain some of Syd Barrett’s best-known compositions. There’s room for hallucinatory explorations like “Astronomy Domine”. There’s the avant-pop of Bike. “Interstellar Overdrive” would remain as a high-water mark for the bravest of prog-rockers.

Extended cuts will even mix in the band’s best early singles, “Arnold Layne”, the tale of a cross-dressing thief, and “Emily Layne”, the band’s biggest hit and the root of the excessive amount of expectation placed on Barrett’s young shoulders.

There’s so much material from which to choose that songs like “Apples and Oranges” were reduced to the status of stand-alone singles. Few psych-rock heirlooms of the 1960s have endured as well as Pink Floyd’s debut. One need look no further than Nick Mason’s touring of the material within the early 2020s and the positive reviews that these shows received.

The Madcap Laughs (1970)

The Madcap Laughs is the album where, depending on your interest in Barrett’s work, things get truly interesting, or especially bizarre. Having been dismissed from the band he had helped create, the musician half-heartedly set about recording music on his own. By most accounts, Barrett may not have been in a great frame of mind at the time. It’s worth noting that the title itself seems to reference the musician’s growing mental illness. But, freed from the shackles of having to turn in another “See Emily Play”, he was able to put down on tape some of the finer songs in his catalogue.

I think that this is the closest that fans of Barrett-era Floyd are going to get to another “Pipers” album. Frankly, while the songs are often disjointed, I think that Syd’s imagination and unorthodox songwriting ability still come through on most of the songs here.

It’s also worth noting, I think, that the majority of the tunes feel made up on the spot. You get the sense that they’re created through pure inspiration. As a songwriter, I can’t help but envy that, as I am sure his former bandmates did as well.

But in this lies the crux of Syd Barrett’s potential evolution as a musician. His friends, chiefly David Gilmour, do the hard labour on this album. Gilmour hired a band patient enough to put up with the troubled genius.

Furthermore, for all intents and purposes, he translated the songs. Many recordings were initially played solo by Barrett before the rest of the band did their best to add the instrumentals. The result, however, is Barrett’s best and most cohesive solo album.

Pieced together may be the most suitable way to describe the record. While all compositions are strong and reveal more of Syd Barrett than any other of his albums, “The Madcap Laughs” sounds as if it is unravelling upon each new listen.

The collection has grown to be viewed as a cult classic. David Bowie, John Frusciante, or R.E.M. all covered songs featured on the record. “Terrapin”, “Octopus”, “Golden Hair”, and “Dark Globe” remain some of the best songs written by anybody during that period and provide a glimpse into the mind of a hypersensitive artist.

“The Madcap Laughs”, naturally, has acquired a reputation as a dark, sombre affair. But I don’t hear it. For the most part, it sounds childish, almost giddy, just like Pink Floyd’s early records. The explanation for that, I suppose, might be the fact that several of these songs were leftover compositions written by Barrett in his youth.

But, beyond the eccentricities of Syd Barrett’s music, his peculiar vision and the undeniable quality of his songwriting, make him remarkably influential, in alternative rock especially. The fact that his brief recording output was financed and promoted by a large recording company s an echo of a by-gone era where the innocence, madcap inventiveness of Syd Barrett was viewed as a genuine pop-rock commodity.

Any noteworthy compilations?

Yes, perhaps a few too many compilations have been released of Syd Barrett’s work. This, however, might only make sense. Some of his best material was not used on any of the studio albums, and many of his recordings are unconventional. In 1974, “Syd Barrett” paired the first two solo albums, while “Opel” delivered the leftovers.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, seemingly noticing the growing cult around the musician, a number of low-key and generally poorly packaged compilations were released.

Then, in 2010, with little fanfare, “An Introduction to Syd Barrett” was put out by EMI. It was a format not dissimilar to their release of “Echoes”, the all-encompassing Pink Floyd compilation. While rather obvious in its selection, this album provides a great starting point into the work of one of the 1960s’ greatest songwriters.

The bulk of the record includes songs from “The Madcap Laughs”. There are, however, three Pink Floyd songs included (presumably with the blessing from the surviving members who were always considerate of their friend’s finances), and even a couple of songs that had not found their way onto the initial albums.

What’s the Truth About Syd Barrett?

It’s all true and equally false. Every conspiracy theory, myth, and legend about Syd Barrett contains some information that helps us better understand the artist, but never enough to make us understand why the story played out the way it did.

However, I am not sure that’s the point at all. By the 1980s, according to his family, Syd Barrett was, for all intents and purposes, doing much better. He lived with loved ones and had started painting again. He did, however, show no interest in music, least of all his own.

The musical gift he possessed in the 1960s is undeniable and utterly unique, I think. While rock n’ roll, especially the one made in Britain, produced plenty of talented, eccentric characters, I can’t think of a single one that could’ve written “See Emily Play,” “Golden Globe,” or “Jugband Blues.” Remembering Syd Barrett for his genius compositions, other than his mad genius, is a more worthy tribute in my book.