Pink Floyd “Time” Lyrics, Meaning and Song Facts

Pink Floyd’s “Time,” from The Dark Side of the Moon, is one of the band’s most famous meditations on aging, wasted time & mortality. Below are the lyrics, followed by the song’s meaning, album context, clock intro facts, and links to official Pink Floyd merchandise.

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an off-hand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

Tired of lying in the sunshine, staying home to watch the rain
And you are young and life is long, and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun

And you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it’s sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again
Sun is the same, in a relative way, but you’re older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death

Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught, or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over, thought I’d something more to say

Pink Floyd’s “TIME” Song Facts:

“Time” was released March 1st, 1973 on Dark Side of the Moon. One of the best selling albums of all time, Dark Side was the band’s eighth studio album, and Time is the fourth track on the album. It’s notable for the chorus of striking clocks at the very beginning of the song.

Engineer Alan Parsons actually recorded each chiming clock individually at an antique clock shop to test four-channel quadrophonic sound before the band had conceptualized the song!

Time is also the only track on Dark Side that officially credits all four members of the band, and it was the last time in Pink Floyd’s history that all members got songwriting credit.

David Gilmour and Richard Wright both sing on Time, but it was the last Pink Floyd track to feature Richard Wright singing lead vocals for over twenty years, until the song “Wearing the Inside Out” on 1994’s The Division Bell.

The interesting hollow drumming by Nick Mason was actually roto-toms, not regular drums.

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Here’s the official Pink Floyd – Time on YouTube