Fifty years after its release, Dark Side Of The Moon by Pink Floyd retains all its beauty and remains one of the most successful conceptalbums of all time. An unrivalled pinnacle in the use of the musical technologies of the time, the musical journey is enriched by sophisticated techniques, meta-textual elements and multiple narrative layers. Let’s try to explore some of them.
The Dark Side of the Moon: the theme
The Dark Side of the Moon is a narrative about human existence: birth and death, the passing of time, violence, madness, war. The album is divided into two sections, corresponding to the two sides of the vinyl record; within each section, the music flows without pause, as the tracks are in fact interconnected.
The first section recounts life from birth to death and concludes with The Great Gig In The Sky. The second section addresses specific themes: money, war, violence and madness.
The narrative unfolds across four distinct narrative levels:
- The lyrics of the songs
- Fragments of conversations that appear during the tracks or between one track and another
- The music, which often uses descriptive techniques to emphasise the themes of the songs
- Various types of sounds, sometimes used as actual instruments
The different narrative levels do not always proceed in a linear and unambiguous manner; far from it. The spoken comments are often sarcastic and seem almost to contradict the lyrics. Nor is the use of sounds and noises didactic or predictable; the effect is that of a continuous polyphony of music and meaning, with the content intertwining in various ways, leaving the listener free to follow one idea, or its opposite.
The Dark Side of the Moon: the lyrics
The album’s lyrics are often open to multiple interpretations. Some recurring themes are: breathing (Breathe, Breathe-reprise, Time); madness (Speak to Me, Brain Damage); the sun and the moon (Breathe, Time, Brain Damage, Eclipse); the passing of time (Breathe, Time, Eclipse); death (Breathe, The Great Gig in the Sky, Us and Them); corruption and money (Money); war (Us and Them).
In some instances, the lyrics employ meta-textual devices, that is, they break the narrative fiction by directly alluding to the song form in which they are contained. At the end of ‘Time’, the lyrics indeed read:
The time is gone, the song is over, Thought I’d something more to say
In Eclipse, another sophisticated narrative device can be appreciated: the track is constructed through the cumulative, crescendo-like repetition of symmetrical phrases beginning with all that you…; the discourse is thus suspended, fragmented, yet highly powerful and evocative.
This type of poetic device (known as anaphora) is not very common in song lyrics. We find it in a few rare instances, such as Que serà que serà by Chico Buarque, or Quelli che by Enzo Jannacci, to name just two examples from different musical genres.
The Dark Side of the Moon: The Music
The album is engaging and rich in every musical aspect. The choices of timbre and arrangement are extremely varied; indeed, we can appreciate numerous sounds:
Rock band comprising guitars, electric bass, drums and organ (Breathe, Time)
- Piano and gospel vocals (The Great Gig in the Sky)
- Synthesizers and effects (On The Run, Any Colour You Like)
- Backing vocals (Us and Them, Time)
- Saxophone (Us and Them, Time)
- Electric piano (Breathe)
From the perspective of form, too, we find a variety of approaches, from the blues progression in Money, to single-chord songs such as On The Run, right through to the song form of Us and Them and the sudden modulations between the keys of F and Bm in the ballad The Great Gig in the Sky.
The rhythmic solutions are also highly varied: the 3/4 time of Any Colour You Like, the unusual odd 7/8 time of Money, and the traditional rock 4/4 time that characterises the remaining tracks.
In some cases, the music has a descriptive function and conveys certain concepts without the aid of words:
this is the case with On the Run, where the music makes us experience the sensation of a frantic race; with Money, where the odd time signature conveys the strain and breathlessness of accumulation and greed; and again with The Great Gig in the Sky, a lunar and abstract track that encapsulates the entire content of the album, also without the aid of sung lyrics.
The richness of the arrangement is also evident when focusing on the ever-changing solo parts, which are entrusted to: guitar with glissando (Breathe), synthesiser (On the Run, Any Colour You Like), drums (Time), distorted guitar (Time, Money), gospel vocals (The Great Gig in the Sky), tenor saxophone (Money, Us and Them), organ and piano (Us and Them), guitar with wah-wah (Any Color You Like)
Sounds and effects
The use of sounds and effects is rich and original: the heartbeat that opens and closes the album, the clocks that introduce Time, the cash register recorders used in Money rhythmically, like a real musical instrument. We can also hear helicopters, explosions and footsteps. A key contributor to the recording and production of the album was sound engineer Alan Parsons.
A prime example of the articulate and versatile use of sounds on this album is the cry we hear at the beginning of Breathe. This is a sound extracted from Clare Torry’s vocalisation on The Great Gig in the Sky. The use of this single sound can be interpreted on three levels: from a musical perspective, its crescendo serves to open the track. In terms of meaning, it represents the first breath at birth; finally, from a formal perspective, it foreshadows what will happen onThe Great Gig in the Sky, where this voice will take centre stage.
The album is rich in interweavings of this kind, a true labyrinth in which we can follow many paths, often alternative to one another.
Conclusions: The Dark Side of the Moon
What is the dark side of the moon? The tracks seem to offer multiple and contradictory answers: war, corruption and money; or the madness into which one can take refuge, detached and oblivious to everything. Or, even more simply: death, towards which everything converges, despite human efforts and struggles.
This seems to be the ‘apparent’ conclusion, as the final spoken comment states:
“There is no dark side of the moon really. Matter of fact it’s all dark”
Yet this conclusion, in some ways predictable, is not entirely convincing. At the end of the album we feel anything but numb and resigned; this splendid work transcends purely musical boundaries and expresses a very powerful and tangible vitality, to the point of making us believe that the dark side of the moon is not death but life itself, with its struggles and contradictions.
After all, at the end of the album, the last sound we hear is a heart that, despite everything, continues to beat.