Interpretations for the cover of Pink Floyd‘s The Dark Side of the Moon have been shared between fans, with one suggesting it represents the “cycle of life”.
A post to the r/PinkFloyd subreddit saw one user ask what the refraction of light found on the front cover meant. They posted: “The Dark Side of the Moon album cover and title interpretation. I was thinking about the cover and the title of The Dark Side of the Moon when I was listening to it the other day. The prism reveals all the colours that you can’t ordinarily see in a beam of white light. And what is on the dark side of the moon, literally? We can’t see it. It’s hidden, it’s a mystery. Could these choices be hinting at the idea that you need to pay careful attention to the lyrics to interpret the true meaning of the album?
“Was this their way of saying that there’s something deeper there than is immediately apparent and they want people to get the hidden meaning? These kinds of artistic choices aren’t random, they had to be for a purpose. I don’t think they just thought the name and the album cover concept just sounded cool.”
Fans have since suggested what the title could mean, and have linked it to one of the album’s songs, Brain Damage. One user wrote: “The album cover represents the cycle of life. If you open the gatefold on the record, the rainbow leads inside the gatefold where it becomes a heartbeat.
“It stretches across the gatefold and goes around the back cover, where it once again goes into the triangle and comes out as the white streak of light, leading into the triangle again on the front. For the title, I think that comes from Brain Damage‘s line ‘I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon.’ That song was created before the album was even called The Dark Side of the Moon (it was called A Piece For Assorted Lunatics at the time).”
Another wrote: “I think it represents the illusion of choice, any colour you like is about the illusion of choice and the album cover shows that perfectly, all these colours going into the system and coming out with the same thing.”
A third added: “I believe that the cover represents the nuance of life, how things may seem black and white but have a multitude of different aspects and different opinions or feelings. The Dark Side of the Moon is a celebration of the human spirit, and a psychological dive into how one becomes driven crazy by time, money, war, pressure, death, life, and everything else under the sun.”
Dark Side of the Moon album cover and title interpretation
by inpinkfloyd
Aubrey Powell, who created the album cover, offered her interpretation of the cover too, with Pink Floyd delighted by her work when they first saw it.
She said: “I have no idea what makes that album cover so successful. The Dark Side of the Moon was conceived on an afternoon when Pink Floyd [David Gilmour, Rick Wright, Roger Waters and Nick Mason] asked for something very simple and very graphic instead of one of our surrealist photo designs, which wasn’t our style at all.
“I was reading this magazine – an American magazine actually – about the refraction of light. And Storm [Thorgerson] standing next to me and he said, ‘I’ve got it. A triangular shape with a prism.’ I could illustrate quite well, so I drew it out on a piece of paper. We rushed up to Abbey Road Studios and said [to the band], ‘How about that?’ And they all went, ‘Yeah, that’s us! That’s Pink Floyd.'”
