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Pip: Kincaid McCawley has ranked every song on The Dark Side of the Moon, and yes, someone had opinions about the key of B minor.

Mara: This episode covers one thing in depth: a full tier-list ranking of the album's songs, with music theory, lyrical analysis, and some genuine argument for why certain tracks land where they do.

Pip: Let's get into it.

The Dark Side of the Moon songs ranked

Mara: The question here is simple but contentious — which songs on this album actually earn their place, and which are just coasting on the album's reputation?

Pip: The tier system runs from F through S, and the post is upfront about one rule: instrumentals that function as skits are excluded, so Speak to Me doesn't appear. C Tier is where the bottom half lands.

Mara: On the Run gets placed ninth — "basically a repeat of E minor and E5 until we reach Time," dragging and feeling unnecessary to the album. Any Colour You Like sits eighth for similar reasons, though it earns credit for transitioning well into Brain Damage.

Pip: B Tier is where it gets interesting. Money lands seventh, and the analysis is genuinely sharp — the song's 7/4 time signature gives it what the post calls "an uncanny feeling like something's missing," with the guitar solo breaking into 4/4 as a grounding force.

Mara: And then comes the barb. The post reads: "Every time I listen I imagine Roger writing this song with the most punchable smirk."

Pip: That is a sentence that exists, and it is doing real work. The critique isn't that Money is bad — it's that the song's anti-greed message feels shallow when Animals handles the same territory with more teeth.

Mara: Eclipse and Breathe round out B Tier. Breathe gets the more detailed treatment — the post traces how E minor's grief-coded quality sits against lyrics about being born, and how the chorus chords shift to something more ominous, introducing what the post calls "the theme of duality."

Pip: Us and Them lands at four, praised for its D major military-triumph feel and its war narrative, but held back because Brain Damage simply does the same emotional work better as a piece of music.

Mara: A Tier has Brain Damage and Time. Time gets the fuller breakdown — clock sounds building into F sharp minor, a key chosen specifically for its resentment, with a chorus that turns contemplative before reprising Breathe.

Pip: And the top spot goes to The Great Gig in the Sky, which the post calls the protagonist's death — an improvised vocal track that moves through B minor, B flat, and G minor, mapping the five stages of grief in under five minutes.

Mara: The kicker is that the vocalist who delivers all of that wasn't a member of Pink Floyd. The post calls it "absolutely amazing" — and the ranking agrees.

Pip: So the album holds up, mostly — with a couple of tracks that are more connective tissue than destination.

Mara: And the argument that The Great Gig in the Sky is the best thing on it is one worth sitting with. More rankings ahead.