Pink Floyd Meaning

On March 1, 1973, Pink Floyd released what some consider their best and most famous album, “The Dark Side of the Moon.” The album holds the record for time spent on the Billboard Top 200 albums with a total of 861 non-successive weeks, (Billboard) and includes prominent songs such as “Time,” “Money,” and “The Great Gig in the Sky.” It is characterized by the cover, which shows a prism separating a strand of light into a rainbow over a black background. When the album was released, the image impacted the music’s success by gaining the attention and support of a broader audience. In the recent year of 2011, the album cover proved itself once more when it was ranked the number two album cover of all time by the readers of “Rolling Stone.”

(Greene) The cover art on “The Dark Side of the Moon” pointedly uses simplicity, symbolism and an appeal to science to attract an audience that can appreciate the music on the album, and promote the image and music so they retain recognition throughout discography.
One of the most brilliant aspects of the album art is its simplicity. The plain black background contrasts with the prism, white light, and colors on top of it. This brings out the prism, rainbow and white light, making them the focal point. It also highlights the rainbow’s colors and the white light by contrasting them with darkness. This contrast makes the album cover seem bright, despite the majority of the background being dark. This contrast would have been lost on an overcomplicated background. If the art would have been cluttered with added text or images, it would have made the image more confusing and drawn away from the alluring purity of the white light and the exciting colors of the rainbow. The symmetry of the image also adds to the simplicity and makes it more pleasant. The light beam and the rainbow are both positioned at the same angle, and the triangle is centered horizontally on the album. The appearance is somewhat altered by the fact that the rainbow is wider than the light line, and this slightly takes away from the centering. However, this disproportion is more pleasant than the alternative: compressing the rainbow or expanding the light until the symmetry is perfect. Those actions would take away from the alluring colors of the rainbow, or the slender, simple nature of light, which embody the main ideas of the visual light spectrum and therefore the album cover.
Overall, the plainness of the album cover is visually attractive, but there is a deeper appeal that comes from the lack of gaudy text or images. The characteristic minimalism of the image leaves the album’s music exposed, and is, therefore, a visual cue for the band’s musical confidence. The image is enjoyable, but not distracting or embellished. One can assume that Pink Floyd expected the music to stand on its own, and the album cover, although very symbolic and captivating, is merely supposed to be representative of the vinyl it protects. While this may seem counterproductive to the effectiveness of the album art, the musical confidence it exudes is appealing to musical fan’s sense of logic. The image does not need to be flashy for the album to be impressive and sell well, therefore the music within it must be notable and worth investigating. The image does not lose any of its pull because of simplicity, it just becomes more assertive and representative of the innovative tracks it symbolizes. The two become merged together in the audience’s memory, and it better accomplishes its goal as album art: representing music.
Although the cover’s minimalism represents the confidence that Pink Floyd feels about their music, “The Dark Side of the Moon” has even deeper symbolism behind the famous image.

Pink Floyd’s cynical lyrics and music suggested that they wanted to educate their audience on the atrocities of the world. “Money,” the fifth track on “The Dark Side of the Moon,” contains the lyrics “Money, so they say/ is the root of all evil today/ but if you ask for a rise it's no surprise that they're giving none away.” These lyrics condemn the skewed, over-prioritization of money in society and reveal the band’s discontent with a negative trait of humanity. “Time,” the third track on the album, says “You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today/ and then one day you find ten years have got behind you.” These lyrics remind the audience that life is short and procrastinating could be detrimental to your dreams and goals. Pink Floyd criticizes the way the world is and tells listeners that they have a limited time to change said injustices within the world. The ideas that the music on “The Dark Side of the Moon” express are radical and rebellious, and they inspire listeners to attempt to amend the wrongs of

civilization.
This desire for change is symbolized by the cover art. The album draws attention to issues within the world that make it a worse, more problematic place. This state of the world is represented by white light. The light suggests that presently people are pure in thought, and naïve: they don’t know about the problems of the world. Humans need a catalyst to start a revolution, so they can move away from obsessions with money, the pain of war and ignoring poverty. That catalyst is represented by the prism. Change could happen if people would use their time wisely and work for it. Artist like Pink Floyd and the attitudes of the youth that bought their albums in the 1970s could act as catalyst for change. This changed, informed world is represented by the rainbow. Multiple colors and hue are denoted, meaning that people are aware of issues within the world. This knowledge has not harmed the human race though, it has turned it into something beautiful. The complete image shows a change from a blind society to one that is aware of the difficulties and able to fix them using thoughts, ideas and justice.
To support its demand for change, “The Dark Side of the Moon” calls on a higher authority: science. The twentieth century was the time of a logical revolution, where people started to rely more on scientific discovery and less on the instruction of religion. In 1968, the Epperson versus Arkansas court case made it to the Supreme Court, where the court ruled that it was unconstitutional for the state of Arkansas to prohibit the teaching of evolution in schools. (NCSE) The evolution versus creationism argument had been circulating for years, and after many court cases that ruled in favor of dismissing Charles Darwin’s theories, the expanded curriculum signified a large advancement of education. Society was changing because of scientific findings and discoveries. These findings and the changes were more often appealing to young people, since they were least acquainted with the old ways of learning and thinking. With so much evidence of evolution, most young people had few problems accepting it into their beliefs. Older people, however, were not ready to let go of the Garden of Eden, and the teachings of the Bible. The Science versus Religion argument that was prevalent in most first world countries in the 1970s helped further a growing rift between the old and the young, and create a rebellious and revolutionary teenage and young adult attitude.
Like the entire religion versus science argument of the twentieth century can be symbolized using the creationism versus evolution argument, Pink Floyd’s use of a scientific phenomenon, the light spectrum, can be used to represent science, youth, and rebellion against an older society that does not want to embrace change.

The image imitates Issac Newton’s work, where he directed a beam of light through a glass prism to analyze the rainbow that came from the other side. This experiment has all the main aspects of the Pink Floyd album: a light beam, a prism and a rainbow. Pink Floyd imitated the famous experiment by recreating an image of it and placing it over a black background. The light over the dark background is another reference to science on the album cover. The light, prism and rainbow over vast darkness is reminiscent of stars in the night sky and space. The twenty century was a time of space exploration and arms races, where man was delving into celestial discoveries with events like satellite launchings and moon landings. Consequently, the dark background with light over it is also associated with space exploration and science. These scientific allusions connect Pink Floyd to science, and a consequence of that connection is a link to the youth in the science versus religion

argument.
This appeal to a higher authority proves to their audience that they believe in a world that runs on new ideas and change. The scientific appeal also helps the album attract an audience that can appreciate Pink Floyd’s music. The aforementioned “Money” lyrics were rebellious; they desired change, like the youth that supported science and freedom rather than religion and rules. The support of science and revolution were some of the most important characteristics in making the album cover effective, since they connected Pink Floyd with youth and society that were ready to change and understand new ideas, and therefore able to appreciate the music that the album cover represented.
The simplicity, symbolism and scientific appeal of Pink Floyd’s “The Dark Side of the Moon” have given it a memorable place in history over the past forty years. The image is still printed on shirts, cups, bags and other merchandise to be sold in stores takes on the old image can be seen when one and over the internet. A new take on the famous image with white light shooting into the glass prism and rainbow colors swirling like ribbons of gas over the right side can be found if one does a Google Image search for “The Dark Side of the Moon.” The original cover still has an audience within a new generation of people because of the effectiveness of the image and the strong connection it has to the music it represents. To this day, it remains one of the most recognized albums in all of discography with an audience that can still enjoy its simple, symbolic, scientific brilliance.