Information about Dark Side of the Moon

In 1998, we celebrate the release, exactly 25 years ago, of Pink Floyd's 8th album, The Dark Side of the Moon. It is the most succesful record Pink Floyd has released up to now, with a world-wide sale of about 30,000,000 copies. In Great Britain, 1 out of every 4 households owns a copy of the record. After the CD was introduced, there was a plant in Germany who did nothing else than manufacturing Dark Side-CD's.

But this commercial succes is not the most important thing the album has to offer. There are not many records which sound just as brand new after 25 years as Dark Side does. This is because Pink Floyd used the studio in a creative way, like no other band ever did, maybe except for the Beatles. This makes the album sound like it was recorded yesterday with the latest technology. But besides that, the theme of the record was never more accurate than today.

The central theme of Dark Side of the Moon is alienation. Alienation from humans towards themselves, their own moral values and those of their surroundings. Dark Side of the Moon shows a dark side of mankind, a theme Pink Floyd repeatedly uses in its albums after 1973.

The lyrics on Dark Side read more like poetry than like prose, in opposition to an album like the Wall(1979). The album has the lyrics on the sleeve for this reason, to show that Pink Floyd gave a new, more important place to the lyrics to oppose the already much celebrated musical domain.

The relevance of Dark Side of the Moon is proved in an almost cynical way by Pink Floyd itself, who, after the surprising succes of the album, could only escape its own alienation very few times

and if the cloud bursts, thunder in your ear
you shout and no one seems to hear
and if the band you're in starts playing different tunes
i'll see you on the dark side of the moon

from:Brain Damage [Roger Waters]

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