Body Count Teams Up With Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour for “Comfortably Numb” Cover

I don’t think anyone had Ice-T covering Pink Floyd on their 2024 bingo card, but yet here we are. Body Count have released their cover of the Pink Floyd classic “Comfortably Numb,” off the upcoming Body Count album Merciless, and teamed up with the original co-writer of the song, David Gilmour, to pull it off. What’s more is that Ice-T added some of his own lyrics to the classic song.

In an interview with Rolling Stone Ice-T explained that, after the publisher denied their request for the cover, he took the bold move of approaching both of the songwriters, Gilmour and Roger Waters, who have been feuding for quite a few years now:

“When we originally contacted their publisher, they said ‘no.’ It was not a diss, but kind of like ‘Pink Floyd doesn’t do samples. They don’t do ads, either.’ We were fucked. I wasn’t going to take the lyrics and put it on another track. I was just going to burn it.

“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.”

Apparently Ice-T wasn’t the biggest Pink Floyd fan growing up, except for the particular song “Comfortably Numb.” Here’s what Ice-T had to say about what the song means to him:

“I can turn on and watch the war in Ukraine, or I can watch the Israel situation, and then click off and then start watching sports. Or I could watch a kid get murdered by a cop or somebody come out and shoot their old lady, and then play my video game. We are just kind of numb to everything that’s going on, the starvation in the world, everything. It must have struck a nerve in both of those guys. I don’t think they would have approved it had I made a record like ‘Comfortable Buns’ or some shit.”

Merciless is out on November 22. If you want to hear their new cover live, Body Count’s only upcoming live dates are the Louder Than Life Festival in Louisville, KY September 28 and Aftershock Festival in Sacramento, CA on October 12.