Body Count Rework 'Comfortably Numb' With Pink Floyd's David Gilmour

American heavy metal meets hip-hop band Body Count have done the unexpected: They got David Gilmour and Roger Waters to agree on something in 2024.

For the third single on their upcoming album, Merciless, Body Count have reimagined the Pink Floyd classic Comfortably Numb, and David Gilmour even plays on it.

Listeners will know it’s still Comfortably Numb by hearing Gilmour soloing, his guitar tone and playing style still distinctly powerful, but Ice-T completely reworked the lyrics, only keeping the line, “Hello… is anybody out there?/ Can anybody hear me?” sung by Gilmour.

“Body Count’s version of Comfortably Numb is quite radical, but the words really struck me,” Gilmour remarked of Ice-T’s new interpretation of a Pink Floyd favourite (per Billboard). “It astonishes me that a tune I wrote almost 50 years ago is back with this great new approach. They’ve made it relevant again.”

Gilmour added that Ice-T initially asked permission to sample Comfortably Numb, but he thought, “I might offer to play on it as well. I like the new lyrics; they’re talking about the world we’re living in now, which is quite scary. Ice-T and Body Count played in London recently, sadly I couldn’t make it, but if another opportunity came up to play with them, I’d jump at it.”

Ice-T, making space for his music career amidst a busy schedule on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, added (per Kerrang), “Comfortably Numb is an introspective song — it’s me acknowledging that I’m older now. I’m telling the younger generation, you’ve got two choices: you can keep the fire burning, or you can give up. It’s me trying to make sense of what’s happening but also pointing out that we’re all in a place where we don’t have to face reality.

“We’ve got flat-screen TVs and popcorn, and we can just sit back and watch the chaos of the world like it’s a TV show. It doesn’t feel real until it shows up at your door. I’m a little numb, too—we all are.”

In an interview with Rolling Stone, Ice-T revealed that the collaboration almost wasn’t meant to be, as Pink Floyd’s publishers initially declined Body Count’s use of the song.

“It was not a diss, but kind of like ‘Pink Floyd doesn’t do samples. They don’t do ads, either,’” Ice-T explained. “We were fucked. I wasn’t going to take the lyrics and put it on another track. I was just going to burn it.”

Then, Ice-T got in touch with Waters and Gilmour via their managers. “Once we got to David, he was like, ‘Fuck, yeah. I love this song. I approve it.’

“And then Roger listened to it, and his only comment was, ‘Who’s singing?’ When he heard it was Ice-T, he approved it.’ To have two people who sit on two opposite sides of the fence agree on a song, that means it must be good.”

You can check out Body Count’s rendition of Comfortably Numb featuring David Gilmour below.

In addition to releasing the new track, Body Count finally announced the release date for their forthcoming album, Merciless, which is due for release on Friday, 22 November, via Century Media Records. You can pre-order the album here.

Ice-T has been killing it in terms of collaborations, teaming up with Aussie metallers Alpha Wolf earlier this year.

The band said of working with the rap-metal icon: “We decided to shoot for the stars and reach out to Ice-T. We gave him no reference, but he did exactly what we were hoping for! It’s classic.”