Pink Floyd Star Roger Waters Says He's 'Far, Far More Important' Than Drake & The Weeknd

He took aim at the Canadians after his recent shows in Toronto.

Tristan Wheeler
Trending Staff Writer
July 15, 2022, 


Roger Waters performing. Right: Drake laughing.
Bdingman | Dreamstime, @champagnepapi | Instagram

Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters had some choice words for two major Canadian artists following his two recent shows in Toronto.

Waters — who is currently touring North America on his This Is Not A Drill tour — slammed both Drake and The Weeknd in a recent interview with the Globe & Mail, claiming to be "far, far more important" than the Canadian icons.

The 78-year-old began by calling out the lack of media coverage his shows got on July 8 and 9 in Toronto.

After the interviewer chalked it up to The Weeknd's show being on the same night, Waters bemoaned that he had two shows that weren't reviewed by any Toronto publications — even after The Weeknd's show was cancelled.

"I have no idea what or who the Weeknd is because I don't listen to much music," said the classic rocker. "People have told me he's a big act. Well, good luck to him. I've got nothing against him."

Waters followed up on this comment by name-dropping another Canadian artist, Drake.

"And, by the way, with all due respect to The Weeknd or Drake or any of them," continued Waters, "I am far, far, far more important than any of them will ever be, however many billions of streams they've got."

On Spotify, Waters himself has a monthly listenership of 550,206 while his former band, Pink Floyd, has 15,452,665.

This is opposed to Drake, who has a monthly Spotify listenership of 67,485,161 and The Weeknd with 75,529,268.

Despite the widespread Rogers outage that took place on July 8, Waters' two Toronto shows were able to take place.

However, The Weeknd's show had to be cancelled due to the outage, which disappointed both the artist and the droves of hometown fans hoping to see his concert.

This isn't the first dust-up with Canadians that Waters has had.

The Pink Floyd bassist and singer famously spat on a rowdy fan in Montreal back in 1977. This incident later became one of the driving forces behind the 1979 Pink Floyd album The Wall.

This article's cover image was used for illustrative purposes only.