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The Dark Side of the Moon at 50
Pink Floyd’s singular 1973 masterpiece is more than a popular album — it’s a generational rite of passage.
In last week’s Billboard 200, SZA’s S.O.S. logged its tenth week at №1. The album’s an eclectic tour de force of modern melodic R&B; it deserves to stay perched on the top for a while.
SZA’s a spellbinding, hugely talented artist. Even before making her full-length debut on 2017’s sublime CTRL, industry tastemakers and music adventurists buzzed with confidence in her. She brought a cool, dreamy charm to the 2014 FADER Fort; flexed hard on some Schoolboy Q cuts, and, oh yeah, cowrote the international megahit “Feeling Myself” with Beyonce and Nicki Minaj.
Then CTRL dropped, spawning two of the most delicious pop cuts of the past decade, “Love Galore” and “The Weekend” and launching her to well-deserved fame. That was before her skyscraping feature on “All The Stars” and a record-setting chart run with Doja Cat.
That S.O.S. debuted at №1 is well-deserved and unsurprising; the real stunner lurks at №155, down 23 slots from the previous week. It was the best-selling album of the 1970s, Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon.
On March 1, 1973, The Dark Side of the Moon descended upon us like an alien spacecraft piloted…
