The Dark Side of the Moon

The Dark Side of the Moon is the eighth studio album by the British progressive rock group Pink Floyd, released on 1 March 1973 in the United States and on 23 March 1973 in the United Kingdom through Harvest Records. The band presented an early version of the album, developed mainly during live performances, several months before recording began. The album's concept is built on the pressures the group experienced over the course of its life and addresses the apparent mental health problems suffered by former member Syd Barrett, who left the band in 1968. The Dark Side of the Moon was recorded in two sessions, in 1972 and 1973, at Abbey Road Studios in London.

The record builds on ideas explored in Pink Floyd's earlier recordings and performances, while dropping the lengthy instrumental passages that characterised their early work. The band used multitrack recording, tape loops and analogue synthesisers such as the EMS VCS3 and Synthi AKS. The engineer Alan Parsons was responsible for many of the album's sonic aspects and for recruiting the singer Clare Torry, who can be heard on The Great Gig in the Sky.

A concept album, The Dark Side of the Moon explores themes such as conflict, greed, time, death and mental illness. Snippets of interviews with the band's road crew are presented alongside philosophical quotations. The cover, which depicts a prism spectrum, was designed by Storm Thorgerson in response to a request from keyboardist Richard Wright, who wanted a 'simple and bold' design representing the band's lighting and the album's themes. The album was promoted with two 45 rpm singles: Money and Us and Them.

The Dark Side of the Moon is among the most acclaimed records in history, often appearing on critics' lists of the greatest albums of all time. It helped propel Pink Floyd to international stardom, bringing wealth and recognition to all four members. A genuine success of the album era, it also boosted record sales across the music industry in the 1970s. It has been certified platinum fourteen times in the United Kingdom and has topped the Billboard 'Top LPs & Tapes' chart in the United States, where it spent 958 weeks in total. With estimated sales of more than 45 million copies, it is Pink Floyd's most commercially successful album and one of the best-selling albums in the world. In 2013, it was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Recording Registry, as 'culturally, historically or aesthetically important'.