Hey You

"Hey You" is a key track on the concept album The Wall, which follows the character Pink - a rock star - as he isolates himself, building a metaphorical wall to detach from the outside world. The song is about the longing for human interaction. The phrase "hey you" implies calling out to someone ("Hey you over there!"). Following that phrase in every verse is a person in some sort of desperate or pathetic scenario. Most are pretty general but some are specific, for example, "You out beyond the wall breaking bottles in the hall," which gives the impression of a rebellious teenager; or "You standing in the road always doing what you're told," which implies someone who is very timid and indecisive. Following these scenarios in every verse is a question asking for human connection, and as the song goes on these questions become more desperate in every verse: "Can you feel me?" "Would you touch me?" Can you help me?" In the scheme of the album the song is about how although people (like Pink) put up their "walls" to keep others out, they desperately but hopelessly long for real human bonds.

The Wall is the creation of Roger Waters, an original member of Pink Floyd who had become their primary songwriter by this point. Many of the song track with his real life, particularly "Hey You." Waters explained to Mojo magazine December 2009: "It's about the break-up of my first marriage, all that misery and pain and being out on the road when the woman declares over the phone that she's fallen in love with somebody else. It's a complete disaster, especially if you're someone like I was. I was flotsam on the turgid seas of women's power (laughs). Hopeless, really, I could do nothing but go fetal and weep. But the song is also partly an attempt to make connections with other people, to say that maybe if we act in consort, some of the bad feelings will go away. In community, there is comfort. The line, 'Hey you, out there beyond the wall/ Breaking bottles in the hall'- that is an exhortation to come closer where I live so we can help each other."

The Wall is a double album with the first disc ending on the song "Goodbye Cruel World," where Pink has completed his wall and detached from the real world. "Hey You" is the first song on the second disc, picking up the story as he copes with his self-constructed barrier.