What Shall We Do Now?

The beginning of the song is the same backing track as "Empty Spaces", but in the original key of D minor. It's a slow, dark progression with a repetitive, electronic drum beat and solo guitar, but where "Empty Spaces" ends and segues into "Young Lust", "What Shall We Do Now?" moves into a second, louder section punctuated with guitar power chords. The transition of D - E - F - E is a recurring theme throughout the album, heard on "In the Flesh?", "In the Flesh", "Waiting for the Worms", and the three "Another Brick in the Wall" songs. The long verse is played with D minor and A minor chords. Where the album's main character, Pink's question about how he should fill out the gaps in his wall was of a rhetorical nature in "Empty Spaces", "What Shall We Do Now?" lists the diversions, possessions, and vices of a rock star ("Shall we buy a new guitar / Shall we drive a more powerful car / Shall we work straight through the night / Shall we get into fights / Leave the lights on / Drop bombs ....") in response.

The two tracks are easily confused. The tape speed for "Empty Spaces" was sped up, to raise its key to E minor, with re-recorded vocals and guitar. The members of Pink Floyd have contributed to the confusion regarding the identity of this track, misidentifying "What Shall We Do Now?" as "Empty Spaces" on multiple occasions, such as in the track listing for the film version of The Wall, and on Waters' The Wall Live in Berlin. On other occasions (such as the officially released live version), the first and second parts of the track are divided and identified as "Empty Spaces" and "What Shall We Do Now?" respectively, even though they are in fact two distinct parts of the same song, the first of which was later intended to be reprised as "Empty Spaces". (This is based on the original lyrics and running order as printed on initial vinyl copies of the album.)

The studio version has not been officially released on any CD to date, but has been widely bootlegged from the film (with the audio taken from VHS, Laserdisc and DVD sources over the decades).

The song was featured in the film version of The Wall,[1] coupled with an animated sequence by Gerald Scarfe. The animation — described by Roger Waters in the DVD commentary as "The fucking flowers!" — starts with the image of two flowers, a rose (the male flower) and a lily (the female flower) caressing each other. Synchronized to the music, the flowers both have sex (taking the shape of a human couple doing so) with the rose at one point is shaped like a penis, and the form of the lily is of a vagina. The flowers got into a fight (while two white doves flew away) forming into dragon-like beasts, and ultimately ending with the lily consuming and destroying the rose.

The flower sequence ends as soon as the first lyrics ("What shall we use...") are sung. The female flower, now transformed into a pterodactyl-like creature, flies into the distance as a row of high-rise and commercial buildings appears. These however turn out to be the wall of many post-war goods such as cars, electronics, motorcycles and boats which slowly surrounds a "sea of faces". As the wall speeds up into "Shall we buy a new guitar?/Shall we drive a more powerful car?...", the animation becomes extremely morbid — faces of people caught in the wall screaming (the screaming face, seen later in "Waiting for the Worms"), flowers turn into barbed wire, a baby suffers a metamorphosis and turns into a reptile-headed creature and then into a Neo-Nazi fascist who bludgeons the head of a sitting-by dark-skinned man with a club and finally, the wall destroys through a cathedral and the rubble builds into a casino-like neon temple which produces more and more bricks. A rag doll (representing Pink) is violently contorting into an array of objects relating to the materialistic and troubled nature of Pink's wall: a voluptuous nude female form, dollops of ice cream, (back to the female shape), an MP-40, a hypodermic needle, a black Fender Precision Bass guitar, and a BMW M1. The sequence ends as the ground rises into the form of a fist that becomes a hammer (a hammer that would reappear in the animated sequence of "Waiting for the Worms").

• Roger Waters – lead vocals, bass guitar, synthesizer
• David Gilmour – guitars, backing vocals
• Nick Mason – drums, percussion
• Richard Wright – piano, synthesizer

• "What Shall We Do Now?" was performed at all concerts on Pink Floyd's The Wall Tour,[1] and so appears on Is There Anybody Out There? The Wall Live 1980–81, released in 2000.
• It was also included in Waters' 1990 The Wall Concert in Berlin, performed by Waters and Bryan Adams, and appears on the album The Wall – Live in Berlin, released later in 1990. Due to the song's omission from the original Wall album, and the lack of a released soundtrack for the 1982 film, this album's recording was the first officially released audio version of the song.
• Waters also performed it on his 2010-13 The Wall Live tour, and it subsequently appears in the Roger Waters: The Wall concert film and live album.

• Lyrics of this song at MetroLyrics