Roger Waters Reimagines “Comfortably Numb” With Palestinian Vocalist, Calls It a Stand for “the Right Side of History”

Roger Waters has released “Comfortably Numb Re-Imagined,” a full recasting of the Pink Floyd song with Palestinian singer Mona Miari. The track, which stretches past nine minutes, strips the original of its narcotic remove and turns the closing refrain into a declaration: “I will never become comfortably numb.”

In an interview with WIRED, Waters said he hopes listeners will eventually hear the piece as “prophetic — there is a right and a wrong. This is not complicated, and this song is on the right side of history.” Miari sings in Arabic, her lines reshaping the song’s imagery into a narrative of resilience. “Like roots breaking through the rubble,” she sings in one passage, “We shape our fate / Our light will break the darkness.” Waters added the Arabic word *ṣumūd* — a concept of steadfastness and staying on one’s land despite displacement — to frame the project.

The release arrives as Waters again confronts accusations of anti-Semitism tied to his support for Palestinian rights. Asked about those criticisms, he replied, “Fuck off is my answer to that,” before elaborating that he has no anti-Semitic views and is interested only in human rights, not religion. The exchange follows recent public sparring with Disturbed’s David Draiman, who called Waters’ political direction a “massive betrayal,” prompting Waters to respond with an open letter calling Draiman an “obnoxious little prick.”

Miari expressed hope that the song might one day be heard as “a testament about the truth,” a document of resistance until a free Palestine exists. Waters, characteristically, framed it as a simple line in the sand: “They were part of the resistance, and we are part of the resistance.”