The Dark Side of the Moon is a concept album by English progressive rock group Pink Floyd. Released in March 1973, the album built on the ideas Pink Floyd had explored in their live shows and previous recordings, but it lacks the extended instrumental excursions that characterised their work following the departure of founding member, principal composer and lyricist, Syd Barrett. The album's themes include conflict, greed, aging, and mental illness, the latter partly inspired by Barrett's deteriorating mental state.

The album was developed as part of a forthcoming tour of live performances, and premièred several months before studio recording began. The new material was further refined during the tour, and was recorded in two sessions in 1972 and 1973 at Abbey Road Studios in London. Pink Floyd used some of the most advanced recording techniques of the time, including multitrack recording and tape loops. Analogue synthesizers were given prominence in several tracks, and a series of recorded interviews with staff and band personnel provided the source material for a range of philosophical quotations used throughout. Engineer Alan Parsons was directly responsible for some of the most notable sonic aspects of the album, including the non-lexical performance of Clare Torry.

The Dark Side of the Moon was an immediate success, topping the Billboard 200 for one week. It would subsequently remain on the charts for 741 weeks (fourteen years), the longest duration of any album in history. With an estimated 45 million units sold, it is Pink Floyd's most commercially successful album and one of the best-selling albums worldwide. It has twice been remastered and re-released, and has been covered by several other acts. It spawned two singles, "Money" and "Us and Them". In addition to its commercial success, The Dark Side of the Moon is arguably Pink Floyd's most popular album among fans and critics, and is frequently ranked as one of the greatest rock albums of all time.

Concept

The Dark Side of the Moon builds upon previous experiments Pink Floyd had attempted in their live shows and recordings, but without the extended instrumental excursions which, according to critic David Fricke, had become characteristic of the band after founding member Syd Barrett left in 1968. Guitarist David Gilmour, Barrett's replacement, would later refer to these instrumentals as "that psychedelic noodling stuff".Gilmour and Waters cite 1971's Meddle as a turning-point toward what would be realised on the album.

Lyrical themes include conflict, greed, ageing, death, and mental illness (or "insanity"), the latter inspired in part by Barrett's deteriorating mental state; he had been the band's principal composer and lyricist.The album is notable for its use of musique concrète and conceptual, philosophical lyrics, as found in much of the band's other work.

Beginning and ending with a fading heartbeat, there are five tracks on each side, each one linked to reflect the various stages of human life. The album explores the nature of the human experience and according to Waters, "empathy"."Speak to Me" and "Breathe" together stress the mundane and futile elements of life along with the ever-present threat of madness and the importance of living one's own life—"Don't be afraid to care"."On the Run", a synthesizer-driven instrumental, evokes the stress and anxiety of modern travel, in particular Wright's fear of flying, by shifting the scene to an airport."Time" looks at the manner in which the passage of time can control one's life, followed by a retreat into solitude and withdrawal in "Breathe (Reprise)". The first side of the album ends with "The Great Gig in the Sky"—a soulful metaphor for death. Opening with the sound of cash registers and loose change, the first track on side two, "Money", mocks greed and consumerism, with tongue-in-cheek lyrics and wealth-related sound effects. "Money" has been the most commercially successful track from the album, with several cover versions produced by other bands "Us and Them" addresses ethnocentrism and conflict and the use of simple dichotomies to describe personal relationships. "Brain Damage" looks at a mental illness resulting from the elevation of fame and success above the needs of the self. In particular the line "And if the band you're in starts playing a diff'rent tune" reflects the mental breakdown of former band-mate Syd Barrett. The album ends with "Eclipse", which espouses the concepts of alterity ("otherness") and unity, while forcing the listener to recognise the common traits shared by humanity

Sales

The Dark Side of the Moon became one of the best selling albums of all time,(not counting compilations and various artists soundtracks), and is in the top 25 of a list of best selling albums in the United States.Although it held the No.1 spot in the US for only a week, it remained in the Billboard 200 for 741 weeks.The album re-appeared on the Billboard charts with the introduction of the Top Pop Catalog Albums chart in May 1991, and it has been a perennial feature since then.In the UK it is the sixth best-selling album of all time.

… I think that when it was finished, everyone thought it was the best thing we'd ever done to date, and everyone was very pleased with it, but there's no way that anyone felt it was five times as good as Meddle, or eight times as good as Atom Heart Mother, or the sort of figures that it has in fact sold. It was something of a phenomena, and was not only about being a good album but also about being in the right place at the right time.

—Nick Mason,

In the US the LP was released before the introduction of platinum awards on 1 January 1976. It therefore held only a gold disc until 16 February 1990 when it was certified 11x platinum. On 4 June 1998 the RIAA certified the album 15x platinum,denoting sales of fifteen million in the United States alone—making it their biggest-selling work there (The Wall is 23x platinum, but as a double album this signifies sales of 11.5 million)."Time" and "Money" remain radio favourites; in the US, for the year ending 20 April 2005, "Time" was played on 13,723 occasions and "Money" on 13,731 occasions."Money" has sold well as a single in its own right. Industry sources suggest that worldwide sales of the album total about 45 million.Between 8,000–9,000 copies are sold each weekand a total of 400,000 were sold in 2002, making it the 200th best-selling album of that year—nearly three decades after its initial release. According to a 2 August 2006 Wall Street Journal article, although the album was released in 1973, it has sold 7.7 million copies since 1991 in the US alone and continues to log 9,600 sales per week domestically.To this day, it occupies a prominent spot on Billboard's Pop Catalogue Chart. It reached No.1 when the 2003 hybrid CD/SACD edition was released and sold 800,000 copies in the US alone.On the week of 5 May 2006 The Dark Side of the Moon achieved a combined total of 1,500 weeks on the Billboard 200 and Pop Catalogue charts.It is estimated that one in every fourteen people in the US under the age of fifty owns or has owned a copy.

In 2006 it was voted "My Favourite Album" by viewers and listeners to the Australian Broadcasting Corporationand in 2003 Rolling Stone listed The Dark Side of the Moon 43rd on its list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.It is also No.2 on the Definitive 200 Albums of All Time, a list made by the National Association of Recording Merchandisers "in celebration of the art form of the record album".

When I was 19 I bought my first real stereo system, one thousand watts of power packed into my tiny little bedroom in the basement. The first record I bought was Dark Side of the Moon....I remember cranking it up so loud the windows would shake !! Man that was great lol ! The perfect record to crank up loud, close your eyes and just enjoy :)

I've spent countless hours listening to this album. The best environment for me is a quiet, candle lit room in the middle of the night.