![\"Pink](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Pink-Floyd-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.jpg\")
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(Credit: Far Out \/ Roger Tillberg \/ Alamy)<\/p>\n
Tue 30 December 2025 11:47, UK <\/p>\n
Before their 1973 masterpiece The Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd<\/a> had struggled to find their feet following the departure of leading light Syd Barrett in 1968. <\/p>\n In the Classic Albums documentary about the LP, guitarist David Gilmour would later describe a lot of their music in the years after Barrett\u2019s dismissal as \u201cthat psychedelic noodling stuff\u201d.<\/p>\n Well, there was no noodling on The Dark Side of the Moon. Just 43 minutes of painfully reflective and profoundly poignant music, spread across ten tracks and myriad different genres, but singular in its vision. There are stark meditations<\/a> on the brevity of life, war, capitalism and class divisions, and mental health.<\/p>\n All of which are couched in an expansive but melodic, jazz-tinged form of psychedelia which Barrett would have been the first to appreciate. Bassist Roger Waters was coming into his own as a songwriter, providing some of the most moving lyrics ever penned for rock songs, and guiding the musical direction of the album.<\/p>\n The title certainly fits the mood of the record, which couldn\u2019t get much darker. The darkness isn\u2019t glib or self-absorbed, though. It\u2019s an expression of deep-seated feelings that the band have a visceral need to share with us, and it can\u2019t fail to move us and make us think.<\/p>\n Quite simply, The Dark Side of the Moon was the first provisional title the band could come up with for the album they were making, to describe the ideas they were putting together. The side of the moon which faces away from the sun was the best metaphor they could find for mental illness, which is the overriding theme throughout the album, as exemplified by the songs \u2018Speak to Me\u2019, \u2018Brain Damage\u2019 and \u2018Eclipse\u2019.<\/p>\n In particular, they were thinking of their former bandmate Barrett, whose mental health struggles had forced him out of the band and into reclusion. The etymology of the word \u201clunacy\u201d, a common synonym for insanity, appealed to the band because it originated in the medieval diagnosis of an intermittent kind of madness that seemed to vary according to the position of the moon.<\/p>\n The album was even subtitled \u201cA Piece for Assorted Lunatics\u201d when the band premiered it live in London\u2019s Rainbow Theatre a year before its release on record. The theme of lunacy would continue to be an overarching subject of Pink Floyd\u2019s music from that point on, especially on their album Wish You Were Here, for which they wrote the song \u2018Shine On You Crazy Diamond\u2019 in direct reference to Barrett.<\/p>\n The band would never manage to top The Dark Side of the Moon, though, as a singular piece of art. As Waters recently explained to AXS TV<\/a>, Floyd had \u201cfinally cracked it\u201d. They\u2019d made the album which would define their career<\/p>\n Is it their best album?<\/p>\n While Pink Floyd fans have a propensity to indulge in the rarer moments of the band\u2019s career, this album is undoubtedly the group\u2019s greatest.<\/p>\n The album isn\u2019t only a conceptual masterpiece but also sees the band provide some of their best singular songs too. As well as \u2018Money\u2019, \u2018Time\u2019 and \u2018Breathe\u2019, the album holds perhaps one of their most beloved tracks of all time in \u2018The Great Gig in the Sky\u2019. They are individually brilliant, but when the songs are sewn together, the tapestry created is that of legend.<\/p>\n![\"Pink](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Pink-Floyd-Dark-Side-of-The-Moon-1973-Far-Out-Magazine-1024x1024.jpg\")
<\/a>The powerful album cover. (Credits: EMI)But what does the title actually mean?<\/p>\n