Dark Side of the Moon |
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Released: March 1, 1973 Peak: 11 US, 2 UK, 16 CN, 11 AU, 18 DF Sales (in millions): 18.0 US, 3.91 UK, 45.0 world (includes US and UK) Genre: classic psychedelic/progressive rock |
Tracks:Song Title (Writers) [time] (date of single release, chart peaks) Click for codes to charts.
Total Running Time: 43:09 The Players:
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Rating: 4.681 out of 5.00 (average of 37 ratings)
Quotable:“One of the most consistently popular albums of all time.” – Tim Morse, Classic Rock Stories |
Spotify Podcast:Check out the Dave’s Music Database podcast episode Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon: 50th Anniversary. Premiere: 3/28/2023 at 7pm CST. Tune in every Tuesday at 7pm for a new episode.
Awards:(Click on award to learn more).
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About the Album:Dark Side of the Moon is the rare album to achieve the trifecta of success – near-reverential critical acclaim, astronomical sales (top 5 all time), and staggering chart success (18+ years on the Billboard album chart and over 518 weeks on the UK album chart). No one could have foreseen the impending success based on Floyd’s first five years. They burst out of the gates with 1967’s Piper at the Gates of Dawn, an album spearheaded by then-leader Syd Barrett. When he “disappeared into a psychedelic haze” BN and mental instability, the band carved out a new identity, with leanings toward more progressive rock. With Dark Side of the Moon, “Pink Floyd…finally ditch their primal Syd Barrett psychedelia” Q by crafting an album “that is discovered anew by each generation of rock listeners.” AMG “There's…something reassuringly obscure” SM about the album. “Setting aside [its] historical baggage,” PK “it is fascinating that an album whose central theme is madness” CRS “or things that drive people mad” CA “would become one of the most consistently popular albums of all time.” CRS “The band could hardly be accused of going for populist themes;” SM they tackle “death, violence, and paranoia” SM as well as “alienation, insanity and the tragedy of the human condition.” RV Perhaps because of that, the band received “the kind of cult adoration usually only granted to those whose critical cachet is in direct inverse to their popular appeal.” SM Put another way, “it's a long way from Saturday Night Fever.” SM “The subtly textured music…evolves from ponderous, neo-psychedelic art rock to jazz fusion and blues-rock before turning back to psychedelia.” AMG “The sound is lush and multi-layered;” RS it's dense with detail, but leisurely paced.” AMG “Pink Floyd doesn’t rush anything; the songs are mainly slow to mid-tempo, with attention paid throughout to musical texture and mood,” AZ consquently “creating its own dark, haunting world.” AMG “The primary revelation of Dark Side of the Moon is what a little focus does for the band.” AMG As far as previous endeavors went, “there was a lot of self-indulgent nonsense before this album happened along.” CD “Atom Heart Mother and Meddle had hinted at Floyd's potential,” Q the latter of which “pointed the way forward with its epic ‘Echoes’ track, but this time the concept would be carried through the entire album.” SM “By condensing the sonic explorations of Meddle to actual songs and adding a lush, immaculate production to their trippiest instrumental sections, Pink Floyd inadvertently designed their commercial breakthrough.” AMG Dark Side is “an enigmatic but richly melodic concept album about madness and mortality.” SP It is “a continuous, masterful” RV “piece of music” DD that owes its success ”more to the cohesiveness of the record as a whole, rather than the strength of any individual songs.” PK “Dark Side of the Moon isn't ten of the greatest tracks ever written…it's ten tracks that work brilliantly in combination - a whole more than the sum of its parts.” AD The History: Initially, Waters came up with “an idea for a song about insanity…during the Meddle sessions. A little later, the group found themselves in Nick Mason’s kitchen discussing the idea of a suite of songs all linked together. The insanity idea was held - madness, death, aging” AD and “Waters wrote a series of songs about mundane, everyday details which aren't that impressive by themselves.” AMG In fact, “they resemble a philosophical treatise much more than the outlook of an emotion-full poet…this is Doctor R. Waters, Ph.D., who has just finished adding rhymes to his latest thesis.” GS Still, “when given the sonic backdrop of Floyd's slow, atmospheric soundscapes and carefully placed sound effects, [the songs] achieve an emotional resonance.” AMG While “Roger Waters’ [possesses an] almost peerless genius for writing profoundly evocative, yet unforced lyrical metaphors,” RV “the album [also] exemplifies Pink Floyd's musical range and technical virtuosity.” RV “David Gilmour’s “vocals are at their best” PK and his “guitar throughout is inspired, mixing jagged blues playing with atmospheric slide motifs and chords.” SM This “catches the band at its peak -- more musically varied than the spaced-out folkie-experimental music of Floyd's earlier albums, and less prone to Roger Waters’ oppressive worldview than later albums.” PK ”Much of the album had been performed live under the title of Eclipse for some time before the Floyd even entered the studio, which accounts for it's instrumental cohesion. It also allowed the band time to experiment with the various segues and moods.” SM The album “was recorded at the world famous Abbey Road Studio's in London, from June 1972 through to January 1973.” CA “By now the band were acknowledged masters of technology, and they utilised the latest facilities Abbey Road had to offer, ably assisted” SM by “their long-time engineer, Alan Parsons.” CD “From an audiophile’s standpoint” CRS “technology wise, [Dark Side] was way ahead of it’s time.” CA “Copies…could always be found in hi-fi stores. Because of it's sound production, it was frequently used to demonstrate the latest range of turntables/amps/speakers as they came onto the market.” CA “Cosy couples happy in their new homes rushed out to buy copies…to play on their newly installed state-of-the-art Seventies hi-fi equipment, safe in the knowledge that here was the very best audio quality the world had to offer.” AD The album became “one of the great headphone albums and…the album of choice for a generation of herbal adventurers.” SM ”No previous album boasted such an immaculate production or such a huge load of special effects.” GS “This record is a follow-up to [The Beatles’] Sgt. Pepper with its wide variety of sound effects… and studio trickery” CRS “from stereophonically-projected footsteps and planes flying overhead (‘On the Run’) to a roomful of ringing clocks (‘Time’)” CD to “Money” with its “sampled sounds of clinking coins and cash registers turned into rhythmic accompaniment.” AZ The effects “are impressive, especially when we remember that 1973 was before the advent of digital recording techniques.” AZ “Speak to Me” As for the actual songs, the album kicks off with Speak to Me, a song composed by Nick Mason. It “is both an overture and a collage, combining sounds from the songs that would follow (the cash register from ‘Money,’ Clare Torry’s vocal from ‘The Great Gig in the Sky’) with spoken vocals.” SP Random people passing through Abbey Road studios were asked questions such as “When was the last time you hit someone?” or “What do you think of death?” SM The title “Speak to Me” grew out of the phrase Alan Parsons used when prepping interviewees. SP The answers were actually sprinkled throughout the album, the most notable being the “album’s stark final line” SM from Abbey Road’s Irish doorman: “There is no dark side of the moon really. Matter of fact, it’s all dark.” SM Another highlight is “manic laughter” from roadie Roger the Hat. SM Paul and Linda McCartney were even asked questions, but they weren’t used due to lack of spontaneity. SM The “taped speech fragments may be old hat, but for once they cohere musically.” RC “Breathe (In the Air)” The song first surfaced as an acoustic cut on the 1970 musical score for the “surreal medical documentary” CD The Body, a collaboration between Waters and Scottish composer Ron Geesin. Waters was inspired by Neil Young’s “Down by the River” while Wright credits Miles Davis’ “All Blue” for inspiring the chords he played. SP The track is “so laid back and relaxing, you’ll be almost horizontal.” CA “On the Run” “Time/Breathe (Reprise)” During the Syd Barrett era, Wright was “the band’s second-most prolific singer and songwriter” SP but his “vocal and lyrical contributions became less frequent” SP after Gilmour was added and “the emergence of Waters as the band’s creative leader.” SP This song marked the last time Wright would sing lead vocal (shared with Gilmour) until 1994’s The Division Bell. SP Parsons recorded the clock sounds that open the song. He had gone to a watchmaker’s shop to collect audio for the sound effect library for the studio. When he heard the working title of the song (“Time Song”) he offered the sounds to the band. SP
“The Great Gig in the Sky” The studio version of “Great Gig” featured “a superb vocal performance by session singer Clare Torry, on The Great Gig in the Sky. “She puts everything she's got into her part;” CA she “enriches the already beautiful Rick Wright composition…with some terrific vocal wailing.” AD The song “is spooky; it’s glorious perfect music.” AD “Money” The song, which “illuminates humanity's greed behind the façade of charity,” RV features “another excellent…trademark guitar solo” CA from Gilmour and a bass line which is truly “something special.” GS The song “is broadly and satirically played with appropriately raunchy sax playing by Dick Parry,” RS “a long time friend of the band.” CA The song “has had loads of airplay over the years on radio stations all over the world” CA and while it “became a breakthrough hit for the group in the U.S.,” AD there were actually “no singles…taken from the album in the U.K.” AD Interestingly, while singles usually drive album sales, Dark Side had already achieved a million in sales before “Money” was released as a single. SP
“Us and Them” The song “starts off quietly, but builds…into a really big production.” CA The song is also blessed with another “wonderfully-stated, breathy solo” RS from saxophonist Parry. He is actually the only non-Pink Floyd member to play an instrument on the band. SP The song also features backing vocals from Doris Troy, Barry St. John, and Liza Strike, who all sang on John Lennon’s “Power to the People” in 1971. SP
“Any Colour You Like” It had the working title of “Scat” because of Gilmour’s wordless scat singing on the instrumental. SP The final title was a running joke between the band and roadie Chris Adamson, whose voice opens the album. SP “Brain Damage” Waters hated that Floyd’s music was considered “space rock,” saying that the band’s music “was never about anything but inner space.” SP “Brain Damage” was nearly titled “The Dark Side of the Moon,” but was “more about a metaphorical line between sanity and insanity than an actual celestial body.” SP “Eclipse” The album’s title was briefly Eclipse: A Piece for Assorted Lunatics when British blues rock band Medicine Head released a 1972 album called Dark Side of the Moon. However, when that album went nowhere, Pink Floyd went back to its original title. SP
Conclusion: “Dark Side of the Moon was a benchmark record…[it] changed things considerably for Pink Floyd.” CD “The enormous success…was a double-edged sword…the band suddenly found itself playing football stadiums to huge crowds…Creatively, it almost finished them. They briefly toyed with the idea of making an album using nothing but household objects, which must have enthralled their record company.” SM “Pink Floyd may have better albums,” AMG but “when it comes to their best album, however defined, it's just too hard to avoid Dark Side of the Moon. Sure, its insights are probably more meaningful to stoned teenagers with headphones than to adults listening carefully to the lyrics. But…it still makes for a consistently enjoyable listening experience.” PK “No other record defines them quite as well as this one.” AMG |
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First posted 3/22/2008; last updated 3/28/2023. |
greatest ever made, drop mic:
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