Rather than politics or anything super controversial this morning, a moment of recognition.
On April 28, 1973, one of the greatest albums of all time went No. 1 in the United States, almost two months after it first dropped.
Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon is recognized by almost every industry publication and most music lovers as one of the greatest works ever produced by the band, who themselves are one of the most influential rock groups of all time. The album was a direct confrontation of things bassist and vocalist Roger Waters said “made people mad,” and the album in no small way dealt with the aftermath of former frontman Syd Barrett’s mental collapse years before.
It is also the third album of the Pink Floyd era most people recognize. The albums Ummagumma and Atom Heart Mother were an experiment in developing sound, and that fed into the album Meddle, which is really where the sound that defines who Pink Floyd was born. The following album, Obscured By Clouds, offered a few tweaks but was also based on the band’s soundtrack for the film La Vallée.
It was Dark Side of the Moon, however, that really cemented who they were as a band. The group mixed the sounds that defined rock at the time with what became the foundations of progressive rock - the use of synthesizers and experimental effects - to create something that was critically acclaimed but also deeply personal to them.
Directly confronting commercialism, the pressures of stardom, and the grip of madness, the tracklist is a deep dive into the psyche of Pink Floyd (though, as most of their albums do, several of the tracks offer deeper dive into the mind of Roger Waters than any of the other members). Each of the members gave a significant contribution to the music behind the subject matter, though (Richard Wright, for example composed what would become “Us and Them”).
The studio engineer for the album was Alan Parsons, who had worked with the Beatles and on Pink Floyd’s Atom Heart Mother (and would later become a commercial success with his own group, the Alan Parsons Project).
The album is still one of the most bought albums of all time, has one of the longest runs at the top of the charts in history, and is considered such an essential piece of artwork that it was recommended for the Library of Congress.
I would argue that you have a moral obligation to give it a listen at least once if you haven’t already. I am going to subject my students to it all day, I think.