The Dark Side of the Moon is the eighth album by the English rock band Pink Floyd. Originally released on 1 March 1973, on the label Harvest, it built on ideas explored in the band’s earlier recordings and live shows, but departs from instrumental thematic by founding member Syd Barrett. The album explores themes including conflict, greed, the passage of time, and mental illness, the latter partly inspired by Barrett’s deteriorating mental state.

Developed during live performances, an early version was premiered several months before recording began; new material was recorded in two sessions in 1972 and 1973 at Abbey Road in London. The group used some advanced recording techniques at the time, including multitrack recording and tape loops. Analogue synthesizers were prominent in several tracks, and snippets from recorded interviews with Pink Floyd’s road crew and others provided philosophical quotations throughout. Engineer Alan Parsons was responsible for many distinctively notable sonic aspects and the recruitment of non-lexical singer Clare Torry. The album’s iconic sleeve, designed by Storm Thorgerson, depicts a prism dispersing light into colour and represents the band’s lighting, the record’s thematic material, and keyboardist Richard Wright’s “simple and bold” design request.

The Dark Side of the Moon was an immediate success; it topped the Billboard Top LPs & Tapes chart for a week and remained in the chart for 741 weeks from 1973 to 1988. With an estimated 45 million copies sold, it is Pink Floyd’s most commercially successful album and one of the best-selling worldwide. It has been remastered and re-released twice, and covered in its entirety by several other acts. It produced two singles, “Money” and “Us and Them”, and is the band’s most popular album among fans and critics, and has been ranked as one of the greatest albums of all time.

Released: 1 March 1973

Recorded: June 1972 – January 1973 at Abbey Road Studios

Genre: Progressive rock

Length: 42:49

Label: Harvest

Producer: Pink Floyd

Singles released from the Album:

“Money” Released in May 1973

“Us and Them” Released in February 1974