It’s a rainy Monday morning, and I’ve got my personal collection of Pink Floyd queued up on Spotify. The weather is the perfect backdrop for their music—moody, layered, a little otherworldly. Today, inspired by those familiar opening heartbeats, I feel compelled to write about what I consider the greatest album in rock history by my favorite band: The Dark Side of the Moon.

This isn’t just history—it’s also my history.

The year was 1973. March 2nd—my birthday, in fact. My mother asked what I wanted, and I told her: two 8-track tapes. One was by a band I had never even heard before—Pink Floyd. The other was the one I really wanted at the time… though, for the life of me, I can’t remember now what it was. Funny how that works.

I had spotted an ad in Creem magazine—a jet-black album cover with a prism, a thin white beam of light striking one side and exploding into a rainbow on the other. I didn’t know the band, the songs, or the story, but I knew that cover was cool enough to own. Sometimes, that’s all it takes.

I’ll never forget the first listen. The opening track, Speak to Me, begins with a low, rhythmic thump—the sound of a human heartbeat—layered with strange murmurs. A voice says, “I’ve always been mad. I know I’ve been mad…,” followed by a burst of manic laughter. Then, without warning, it flows into Breathe, a hypnotic wash of slide guitar and floating vocals. I was hooked within minutes.

And that was only the beginning. The album built and built—through Time, with its cacophony of chiming clocks and one of the finest bass-and-drum grooves ever recorded; The Great Gig in the Sky, where Clare Torry’s wordless, soaring wails still give me chills; and Money, instantly recognizable from the first clank of those cash registers. Then came Brain Damage and Eclipse, closing the journey the way it began—with that steady, pulsing heartbeat.

That record never let go of me. Over the last 52 years, I’ve gone through at least two 8-tracks, three or four cassettes, one CD, and four or five vinyl copies of Dark Side of the Moon. I wore them all out. Now, with my recently purchased turntable (we don’t call them “record players” anymore), I own the original pressing, the remastered version, and the reissue. Honestly, I can’t tell the difference in sound—only in the lightness of my wallet.

One of my most treasured souvenirs is the 50th Anniversary edition, with its striking white cover, which I bought at Abbey Road Studios in London—the very place Dark Side was recorded. Standing in that building, knowing those songs were born there, was something close to sacred.

Back in 1973, I had never heard of a band with such a ridiculous first name as Pink Floyd. I wasn’t interested in their backstory; I just wanted the music. But Dark Side awakened something in me I didn’t know was there: an immense appreciation for the craft, ambition, and emotional power of rock music. For the record, back then it wasn’t called “classic rock.” It was just rock—sometimes “hard rock” if you wanted to sound cool.

As I later learned, the name “Pink Floyd” came from combining the names of two American bluesmen, Pink Anderson and Floyd Council. In their early years—when the lineup was Syd Barrett, Nick Mason, Roger Waters, and Richard Wright—the band leaned toward psychedelic experiments and claimed blues roots. I’ve listened to all of the Barrett-era albums, and to be blunt, I don’t hear a lick of blues. To me, they’re fascinating curiosities, but not great records. Barrett’s excessive LSD use made him increasingly unreliable, and in 1968 the band brought in David Gilmour to take over guitar and vocal duties.

Before Dark Side, the Gilmour-era Floyd had already released six albums, each one more focused and refined than the last. You could feel them building toward something epic—something that would define them for decades. That “something” arrived in March 1973.

Of course, The Dark Side of the Moon wasn’t the end of the story. Four more iconic albums followed, including Wish You Were Here, Animals, and The Wall—which gave us my favorite Floyd song, Comfortably Numb. But Dark Side was the turning point—the moment they transcended the confines of rock and created a work that still resonates half a century later.

The album is a concept piece, its tracks tied together by themes of mental illness, mortality, greed, time, and the desperate need for human empathy. Much of it was inspired by the mental decline of Syd Barrett. Dark Side stayed on the U.S. Billboard chart for an astonishing 741 weeks—over 14 years. (Their homage to Barrett would continue on the following album, Wish You Were Here.)

I’ve been fortunate enough to see Pink Floyd in concert before they disbanded in 2015. I’ve also seen David Gilmour live, heard Gov’t Mule play Dark Side in its entirety, and enjoyed more than a few of the top-tier tribute bands who keep Floyd’s music alive on stage.

And I’ll keep going. Because The Dark Side of the Moon isn’t just an album—it’s a place I can return to any time I want. A place where the heart still beats, the clocks still chime, and the prism still scatters its light into colors that never fade.

This morning, it began in the rain, the music perfectly matching the grey outside my window. Now, as I finish writing, the clouds have broken and sunlight is pouring in. The prism on that famous cover would approve—white light in, color out.