Dark Side Eclipses Concept Album Classics

On March 10, Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon turned 37. So given that it is my favorite concept album ever, I decided to call it the overall greatest of all time for Wired. And it was a hit.

Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon Eclipses Concept Album Classics

Scott Thill, Wired.com]
Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon turns 37 Wednesday after another year kicking ass on every concept album that came before or after it.

The English quartet’s sixth studio effort is a seamless masterpiece that cannot be readily sliced and diced into iTunes singles for sale, as the band argues during its ongoing dispute with its record label, EMI.

Confidently hop-scotching across the themes of life, death, violence and mental illness — and foregrounding groundbreaking musical experiments in sampling, tape loops and synthesizers — Dark Side of the Moon has continually astounded brains and eardrums since its arrival.

While the other epic sonic explorations listed below have challenged the status of Pink Floyd’s 1973 record, Dark Side remains Earth’s reigning concept album.

Pink Floyd not only made the most memorable concept album in history, it made several of them, including these three standouts.

Wish You Were Here extended the band’s philosophical meditations on Syd Barrett’s mental illness and the machinery of capitalism, especially in the music industry, but the scathing criticism of politics, media and conformity found on Animals remains Pink Floyd’s most underrated classic.

The Wall’s subsequent interrogation of stardom, solitude and fascism crossed over huge on the charts and even in theaters, in the form of Alan Parker’s 1982 musical movie. But by the time the band’s original lineup got to its last concept album, The Final Cut — which is more or less Roger Waters’ first solo effort — it had run out of steam.

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