The Dark Side of the Moon (50th Anniversary)

Released March 1, 1973 via Capitol in the US, with Harvest following in the UK on March 16, The Dark Side of the Moon was cut at Abbey Road over about sixty days between May 1972 and February 1973, with Alan Parsons engineering. Roger Waters' lyrics about time, money, madness and death run as one continuous suite, stitched together by heartbeats, cash registers and stray voices. Waters wrote questions on flashcards and recorded the answers of roadies, a road manager's wife and the studio doorman, Gerry O'Driscoll, whose last word closes the record. Paul and Linda McCartney were asked too, and their answers were thrown out.

"Time" opens on a wall of chiming clocks Parsons had recorded in an antique shop as a quadraphonic test. Clare Torry walked in on Sunday, January 21, 1973 and improvised the wordless vocal on "The Great Gig in the Sky" in three or four quick takes for a £30 fee, and three decades later sued and won a co-writing credit alongside Richard Wright. "Money" rode its 7/4 bass line and tape-loop till to No. 13 in the US, and "Us and Them" and "Brain Damage" slow everything to a hush before "Eclipse" brings the whole band back for the finale.

The record that turned Pink Floyd's psychedelia into architecture, it has sold more than 45 million copies, gone 15 times Platinum in the US and spent close to a thousand weeks on the Billboard 200. The prism, conceived by Storm Thorgerson and drawn by George Hardie for Hipgnosis, became one of the most recognised images in popular music.

2023 50th anniversary remaster by James Guthrie with Joel Plante, pressed on 180g vinyl.