The Dark Side of The Moon - Legacy

Legacy

The success of the album brought previously unknown wealth to all four members of the band; Richard Wright and Roger Waters bought large country houses, and Nick Mason became a collector of upmarket cars. Some of the profits were invested in the production of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Engineer Alan Parsons received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Engineered Recording, Non-Classical for The Dark Side of the Moon, and he went on to have a successful career as a recording artist. Although Waters and Gilmour have on occasion downplayed his contribution to the success of the album, Mason has praised his role. In 2003, Parsons reflected: "I think they all felt that I managed to hang the rest of my career on Dark Side of the Moon, which has an element of truth to it. But I still wake up occasionally, frustrated about the fact that they made untold millions and a lot of the people involved in the record didn't."

It's changed me in many ways, because it's brought in a lot of money, and one feels very secure when you can sell an album for two years. But it hasn't changed my attitude to music. Even though it was so successful, it was made in the same way as all our other albums, and the only criterion we have about releasing music is whether we like it or not. It was not a deliberate attempt to make a commercial album. It just happened that way. We knew it had a lot more melody than previous Floyd albums, and there was a concept that ran all through it. The music was easier to absorb and having girls singing away added a commercial touch that none of our records had.

The Dark Side of the Moon frequently appears on rankings of the greatest albums of all-time. In 1987, Rolling Stone listed the record 35th on its "Top 100 Albums of the Last 20 Years", and sixteen years later, in 2003 the album polled in 43rd position on the magazine's list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time". In 2012, The Dark Side of the Moon was voted 43rd on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time". In 2006, it was voted "My Favourite Album" by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's audience. NME readers voted the album eighth in their 2006 "Best Album of All Time" online poll, and in 2009, Planet Rock listeners voted the album the "greatest of all time". The album is also number two on the "Definitive 200" list of albums, made by the National Association of Recording Merchandisers "in celebration of the art form of the record album". It came 29th in The Observer's 2006 list of "The 50 Albums That Changed Music", and 37th in The Guardian's 1997 list of the "100 Best Albums Ever", as voted for by a panel of artists and music critics. The album's cover has been lauded by critics and listeners alike, VH1 proclaiming it the fourth greatest in history, and Planet Rock listeners the greatest of all time.

Part of the legacy of The Dark Side of the Moon is in its influence on modern music, the musicians who have performed cover versions of its songs, and even in modern urban myths. Its release is often seen as a pivotal point in the history of rock music, and comparisons are sometimes drawn between Pink Floyd and Radiohead—specifically their 1997 album OK Computer—which has been called The Dark Side of the Moon for the 1990s whereby the two albums share a common theme: the loss of a creative individual's ability to function in the modern world.