Pink Floyd, Roger Waters releases the official version of "Comfortably Numb Re-Imagined" – Listen to the stream

Roger Waters returns to revisit one of the most celebrated songs in the Pink Floyd catalogue with “Comfortably Numb Re-Imagined,” a new version recorded alongside Palestinian singer Mona Miari and now available on streaming platforms. The project, dedicated to Gaza, will be accompanied by an official video clip due out on June 17. The announcement came via the two artists' social media channels, together with a short message in which Waters and Miari describe the track as “born out of love and sincerity.” Alongside it, an over eight-minute reworking of the classic from 1979's “The Wall” has also been made available, along with a shorter, roughly three-minute edit.

Musically, the new interpretation follows the approach Waters already adopted back in 2022 for his controversial reworking of the Pink Floyd album. David Gilmour's famous guitar solo is gone, and the song takes on a sparer, more choral form, built around acoustic instruments, percussion, flute and group vocals. Indeed, Gilmour's name doesn't appear in the credits.
The most significant change, though, is the introduction of new sections sung in Arabic by Mona Miari. The lyrics, subtitled in English, speak of loss, exile and longing for one's homeland:

After everything that has happened, with no one left, all the words have faded away. Why ask questions, anyway? Everything is lost, home... oh beloved home. Night falls silently and crumbles. Oh beloved home... tell him. The olive branch reaching toward the stars, an open wound crying out for freedom.

Waters answers Miari's voice with words that replace the famous refrain originally sung by Gilmour:

I feel your pain from New York City, I feel your pain from across the sea calling to me and you.

The Palestinian singer then continues with a message of hope and resistance:

When I was young I dreamed of freedom. Hope burns fierce in what I am. Like roots making their way through the rubble, we shape our destiny. Our light will break the darkness. We are the promise of a new dawn

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Un post condiviso da Mona Miari – منى ميعاري (@monamiari)

The centerpiece of the operation is the transformation of the original song's signature line. Where the Pink Floyd lyrics read "I have become comfortably numb", Waters and Miari replace it with "I will never become comfortably numb", completely flipping the song's meaning and turning it into a statement against indifference and the numbing of pain.
In the visual released in recent weeks, directed by David Barron and co-directed by Miari herself, Waters also invokes the 1948 Nakba, weaving his personal story into the wider history of the Palestinian people. The song's ending takes on the tone of a collective invocation, with a choir repeating the name of Palestine ("Falasteen"). This isn't the first collaboration between Waters and Miari. The two had already performed together at New York's SVA Theatre, playing "Sumud", a song dedicated to the Global Flotilla, an international solidarity initiative for the people of Gaza.
With "Comfortably Numb Re-Imagined", Waters continues his ongoing reworking of his own back catalogue, turning one of Pink Floyd's most celebrated songs into an artistic and political statement tied to the current Middle East conflict.

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