ABSTRACT
One of the most popular rock albums of all time, Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon is a late 20th-century masterwork, and perhaps the quintessential 'concept album'. Long acclaimed for its stunning studio production and literary coherence in the popular press, the often-ignored musical details of Dark Side also merit attention from scholars and critics. This chapter explores the complete tonal path of The Dark Side of the Moon. Dark Side is the first album of Pink Floyd's mature style, spanning 1973 through 1977, which also includes the albums Wish You Were Here and Animals. The simplicity of each song's individual melodic line coalesces into a single cohesive musical gesture. This fundamental line is an essential to the success of The Dark Side of the Moon's long-range narrative structure, and it is, in essence, the album's musical path..
