Songfacts®:

• "Goodbye Cruel World" closes out Disc 1 of Pink Floyd's double album The Wall. It's a concept album centered on a rock star named Pink who battles the demons of his childhood. At this part of the story, he has become totally isolated, now completely enclosed in the emotional wall he has built up, brick by brick, throughout the album.
• Pink Floyd's Roger Waters, who wrote the song and came up with the concept for The Wall, is the lead singer on this one. The song flows seamlessly out of the previous song, "Another Brick In The Wall (Part 3)," which finds Pink going mad and retreating further. The songs on the album all flow together, but "Goodbye Cruel World" is a stopping point because it's the last track on the first disc. The story picks up with the first track on the next disc, "Hey You," which finds Pink addressing the audience from behind the wall.
• The Wall was also a stage show the band performed from 1980-1981, and a movie released in 1982. In the stage show, it's the last song before a giant wall is erected in front of the band; in the film, it's where Pink (played by Bob Geldof), sits alone with a burning cigarette, cut off from the outside world.