“High Hopes” is a song by the British rock band Pink Floyd.

It belongs to the album “The Division Bell”, the

penultimate one of the band, which was recorded in 1993 and released the following year, also it is the last
track of it.

Structure and music

The song is approximately 8:32 minutes long, therefore it is the longest track of the album. It is in C minor
for almost the whole piece, except for the bridge section which is in E minor.
Here below the formal structure:

- Intro (8 bars) (instrumental)

- Verse 1 (8 bars)
- Little bridge (4 bars)
- Verse 2 (8 bars)
- Chorus (8 bars)
- Verse 3 (8 bars)
- Little bridge (4 bars)
- Main bridge (16 bars)
- Breakdown (4 bars) (instrumental)
- Verse 4 (8 bars)
- x2 Chorus (8 bars)
- Guitar solo and finale (instrumental)

For what concerns the Intro, we can hear, at the beginning, some far ringing bells. After that we hear just one
bell and it will constantly beat the rhythm in backgrounds for most of the song (except for the main bridge
and finale sections). After that the piano is the first musical instrument that appears in the piece, it plays a
very simple, repetitive and melancholic melody, only with the bell in background.

So we have the entrance of the voice, singing the first verse accompanied by the piano, the bell and a sliding
bass note every two bars. Even here the sung melody is simple and gloomy. At the Little bridge the voice is
almost the same and below that it appears a drum line, acoustic guitar and synthetized strings. The verse 2 is
the same as the first one.

Now here we are at the Chorus. We can listen: drums, bass, acoustic guitar, piano, the bell, and synthetized
strings. This time the voice line is simpler than before, in fact, it has only three descending notes repeated till
the end of the chorus. Verse 3 and Little bridge are the same, with different lyrics.

The Main bridge is just instrumental and here an acoustic guitar solo takes the place of the voice. The solo’s
melodic line is characterized by an ascending minor scale that is repeated every two bars, but each time it has
a different phrase ending. Another feature of this section are drums playing a march beat over the whole
section.

After that it starts a little Breakdown, it is the same as the Intro (piano and bell) and it leads us to the last
verse and chorus, but this latter is repeated two times.
The Guitar solo section is the longest and it finishes the song, The guitarist (but also singer) David Gilmour
plays this slow solo using a slide ring, here for the first time we can listen a distorted guitar but the melody’s
nature is sweet and melancholic.
At the end everything fades away, except for the bell; As the beginning we can hear it alone for few seconds,
and after that it starts to fade away and die too.

Lyrics and meaning

“The Division Bell” is considered the real last album of Pink Floyd, for this reason it deals with topics like:
the importance of communication, memories and the past (even in a political key) with a bit of sadness. Most
of all in the track High Hopes, where the lyrics were written by Polly Samson, David Gilmour’s wife, there
is an explicit reference to the past and to how lots of things were several years earlier, especially when Pink
Floyd members were all together at their peak.
Despite everything, the whole song can also have a positive message, and this is witnessed by the ending
words: “The endless river, forever and ever”. The mentioned endless river means multiple things: of course
the time that flows like a river incessantly, the music that will always go forward and mutate over the years,
but also they referred to themselves. So we can also grasp an encouragement to always walk on the path
where someone else has walked on before us and let the river flowing..