Two Suns in the Sunset (5:17)

Two Suns in the Sunset” is the final song on Pink Floyd’s 1983 concept album, The Final Cut. Partway through the song, the lyric “the sun is in the east, even though the day is done” is a metaphor referring to the glowing fireball of a nuclear explosion.[1]

The Final Cut’s main proponent was the band’s bass player and songwriting frontman, Roger Waters, previously a chair of the youth branch of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in Cambridge. “Two Suns in the Sunset” was his view on the world’s end, thermonuclear war, which would ultimately end in nuclear winter. Waters later returned to this theme in his solo albums, most prominently so in Radio K.A.O.S., which dealt with this theme throughout the album.

It is notable for being one of the few Pink Floyd songs in which drummer Nick Mason does not feature. It was felt that Nick was not able to play the part well enough and so drumming duties were instead given over to Andy Newmark. The song also contains the same piercing scream by Roger Waters used on earlier songs such as “Careful with That Axe, Eugene”, the intercut between “The Happiest Days Of Our Lives” and “Another Brick in the Wall Part 2”, and “Run Like Hell”.

Towards the end of the song, we hear the same passing car and radio sound effects that we heard at the start of the album. This cyclical effect was also heard on some of the band’s previous albums, for example the use of “Outside the Wall” on The Wall and the heartbeat on The Dark Side of the Moon.