The Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd’s eighth studio album
In the history of contemporary music, one album seems to stand out as an album many years ahead of anything else around at the time. The Dark Side of the Moon is one of Floyd’s most ambitious albums and its songs depict a cold view on life in modern day society.
Looking at the album musically, there is a lot going on. Not only do all the songs seamlessly flow into one another, many of the songs hold odd rhythms and yet have a similar feel throughout. The first half of the album seems much darker than the later half, divided by The Great Gig in The Sky. This structured mixture of tones makes the album much more enjoyable while listening to it one song after the other and gives the album a true sense of completion at the end. There are so many times where I would hear one song from the album, and it would just draw me in and force me to listen to all of it. Many of the songs boast some of the most memorable melodies and bass lines in Rock and the spacey sounding lyrics add a lot of atmosphere to the song, as though you are floating in the air while listening to it.
Lyrically, the album is another one of Floyd’s takes on society. The lyrics seem to depict the way of living that is expected by people in modern society. From the first two lyrical verses of the album (on the second track Breathe in The Air) we see two different views of life. The first verse talks about living life free, doing what you want to do in peace and connection with the planet. The second verse, on the other hand, talks about how society forces us to work to feel free. In a way, it tells us that society has restricted our freedom by forcing people to lose connection with nature and live on as cogs in a machine, never allowed to simply “fly.”
This idea holds true throughout the album. Each song seems to touch on this aspect of confined freedom that we as humans live through today. In other albums, like Animals, Floyd also talks about society and how politics seems to be the reason why society seems degraded to them. However, this seems more like a message to help the living. They are showing us that we do not need to have a lot of money to have a good life, you do not need to be constantly working to have a good life, you do not need to be surrounded by strong relationships. Instead, you need to do what comes to you naturally, step out of the line of society that wants you to walk on and carve your own path through life. That is truly one way to achieve a good life. Another would be to listen to this album over and over again!