We can file this one under Things I Wish I’d Made Up: RWNJs think Pink Floyd has “gone woke.”
This year marks the 50th anniversary of Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon,” something that didn’t go unnoticed by the suits at Sony. The LP has spent decades on the Billboard 200 album chart and still sells nearly 10,000 units a week, but as the LP’s best-known song points out, money, it’s a hit, so we’re getting a boxed set to mark the occasion.
No special edition would be complete without new packaging, right? The original cover — a beam of white light entering a prism and emerging in a rainbow of colors against a black background, the result of Richard Wright asking the design whizzes at the Hipgnosis studios for something “bold and simple” — is famous well beyond the band’s fan base. Naturally, the new logo had to employ the rainbow theme.
Ah, but a rainbow today carries connotations it didn’t in 1973. The first rainbow flag flew at a gay pride rally in 1978, so some easily triggered gay-bashers took one look at the new logo and rushed to the Twitterverse to condemn the band for “going woke,” in turn unleashing a flood of mockery.
I, for one, am impressed by Roger Waters’ prescience. The lunatics are in the halls, all right — the halls of Congress. Fun fact: The line “And if the band you’re in starts playing different tunes” is a direct reference to Syd Barrett’s breakdown. In his final appearances with the band, he often would start playing the wrong song.
