The Piper at the Gates of Dawn | Ummagumma | Atom Heart Mother | Meddle | Obscured by Clouds | The Dark Side of the Moon
Wish You Were Here | Animals | The Wall | The Final Cut | A Momentary Lapse of Reason | The Division Bell | The Endless River
- Anvilicious:
- Money worries, death, and going insane are bad for your mental wellbeing.
- "Us and Them" has a message that is simple, universally applicable, and as subtle as a hammer to the face: Everyone is capable of being inhumane, and trying to dehumanize your supposed enemies as some monolithic "Them" has never made the world a better place. Put all that together, and you've got one of the best protest songs in the history of rock n' roll.
- Awesome Music: There's a reason that this is one of the best-selling albums ever. The primary one is the sound of this album is at a quality that few albums before it ever reached (and few since). It didn't matter if it was in stereo or quadraphonic format, on vinyl, tape, or CD, the music overwhelms you. See the Killer App entry on the Trivia page. All these reasons are likely why AllMusic lists it as an "album pick," meaning that the site's editors consider the album representative of Pink Floyd's work as a whole.
- Epileptic Trees: "The Dark Side
of the Rainbow". The band members, aware of this rumour, have repeatedly denied that it was intentional; Nick even made a joke about it.Nick: It's all nonsense. It has nothing to do with The Wizard of Oz. It was all based on The Sound of Music. - Fandom-Enraging Misconception: Some fans of "The Great Gig in the Sky" can get very touchy if one refers to Clare Torry's performance as "wailing".
- Gateway Series: This album has introduced lots of people to Progressive Rock, as Pink Floyd is a gateway into prog and this is usually the first Pink Floyd album most fans start with.
- Growing the Beard: Though they had some success with The Piper at the Gates of Dawn in their native Britain, and their previous albums Meddle and Obscured by Clouds are considered to be much better than their last couple albums, with "Echoes" considered to be a major step forward and where their beard started to grow in particular, this is the album that truly made Pink Floyd the ubiquitous rock 'n' roll juggernaut we know today.
- Hilarious in Hindsight: All those clocks going off at once are bound to remind one of Back to the Future.
- Hype Backlash:
- Given that this album is touted as Pink Floyd's greatest (and maybe even Sacred Cow), this is to be expected. In particular, those who don't like it as much as the rest of the Big Four tend to believe that the album suffers from pacing problems, with songs like "Breathe (In the Air)", "Time", and "Brain Damage" having a good rhythm and flow to them that ends up getting undermined by their placement near songs like "On the Run" and "Any Colour You Like", which get accused of being little more than padding.
- Fans of Syd have been known to bristle that, here he is even after having long left the band, inspiring their music. Which in a roundabout way is true, if perhaps a little mean.
- Just Here for Godzilla: Many people know this album primarily for and because of "Money" - something Waters and the rest of the band have expressed irritation with.
- Memetic Mutation:
- The iconic album cover has spawned many parodies and homages, with one of the best known involving Pokémon's Eevee and its evolutions◊.
- The insinuation that if you pair the album with various films it somehow synchronizes. Started with more serious attempts like The Wizard of Oz or 2001: A Space Odyssey and then branched out into the absurd with films like Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2. We aren't kidding.
- "I like your pride shirt."Explanation
- The iconic album cover has spawned many parodies and homages, with one of the best known involving Pokémon's Eevee and its evolutions
- Newbie Boom: The band picked up a massive new audience with this album, one that had likely not heard of Syd Barrett or the UFO Club.
- One-Scene Wonder: Clare Torry's wail on "The Great Gig in the Sky" was entirely self-improvised. She was initially paid a flat studio fee of just £30 (about £400 in today's money) for her performance, believing her vocals wouldn't end up on the finished album. In 2004, she finally sued for a portion of the royalties as well as accreditation for her work. The lawsuit was settled out of court for an undisclosed sum, and she's now credited alongside Richard Wright as a songwriter.
- Refrain from Assuming:
- The second song is "Breathe", not "Breathe in the Air". This wasn't helped by some CD reissues in the '80s and '90s, as well as Spotify, which labelled the song "Breathe in the Air", sometimes with the final three words in parentheses.
- It's "Brain Damage", not the Title Track. There isn't one.note It's also two songs ("Brain Damage" and "Eclipse" run into each other), not one.
- Sequel Displacement: Some casual fans think it's their debut album.
- Sweet Dreams Fuel: A lot of people cite the album's relaxed, jazz-and-blues-inflected sound, as such.
- Values Resonance: Part of the reason behind the album's public longevity in spite of Progressive Rock's short mainstream lifespan is that the themes tackled by the album, including job anxiety, mortality, the frailty of mental health, and the ills of war culture and capitalism, have only grown more relevant with each passing decade, especially in the 21st century, where the 20-year War in Afghanistan, the disastrous Iraq War, the Great Recession, and the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting quarantines all remain fresh in public memory.
