Speak to Me

Has anyone else that listened to this song noticed that this song contains themes form most of the songs in the album? Like the wailing from The Great Gig in the Sky, the cash register from Money, the laughing from Brain Damage, the ticking of clocks from Time, and the machine guns or helicopters from Us and Them. Turn the volume up...

The first track on Dark Side of the Moon starts out with a beating sound which represents the emptiness and slowly it starts filling out this emptiness with the quotes and different things heard throughout this album...then at the end of the album it takes it all away leaving you with the same emptiness you started out with.

i reckon the line "its very hard to explain why you're mad, even if youre not mad" is the most important one in context to the whole album because it sounds as if he is trying to convince himself that he isnt mad (even tho he might in fact be perfectly sane) and is paranoid about his sanity and the issues in his life

I'm surprised that none of you brought this up sooner, but many Pink Floyd songs are about their former member Syd Barrett. Syd was the original song writer for the band, but years of drug use led to a breakdown which resulted in his replacement in 1968 by Dave Gilmour. Prior to his replacement, Syd wouldn't appear at gigs and interviews regularly, and when he did he seemed very confused. He had become increasingly disconnected with reality. This leads me to believe that many of these songs, about madness, were written with him in mind.

And for the record, the name "Pink Floyd" was derived from two blues musicians: Pink Anderson and Floyd Council. :)

Am I the only one who thinks that the whole cd is an interpretive version of a conversation with a psychiatrist? i mean seriously, these are the things that worry people the most, you know, time and money and thinking that you're going to snap...

This is mind blowing music!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I've always been mad too.

.....are these the right lyrics? Speak to Me? The first track on the Dark Side album? Dark Side starts out with the lyric "Breathe, breathe in the air". There is nothing on that track about madness (well, the word madness)

The first song on Dark Side of the Moon is actually split into two different songs: Speak To Me and Breathe. Speak To Me is the part at the beginning when you hear the heart beat and people talking. Breathe is the one with the lyrics and music.

dom_stapleton is correct, however, so is pinkubus_floyd, who submitted these lyrics. On the original album, the first song is as dom_s says; Speak To Me and Breathe as one track. On some later releases, for example the 30th anniversary realease (my edition of DSotM), this track has been split into two parts, giving a track list of 10 songs.