Published World Copyrights Ltd Recorded January 1973 Length 2:03 | Released 1 March 1973 Genre Art rock Label Harvest | |
"Eclipse" is the tenth and final track from British progressive rock band Pink Floyd's 1973 album, The Dark Side of the Moon. It was sung by Roger Waters, with harmonies by David Gilmour and Rick Wright. After Waters left the band, Gilmour sang the lead when performing live. This song was one of several to be considered for the band's "best of" album, Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd.
Contents
Composition
This song serves as the album's end and features a loud, repetitive melody that builds up, then ends with a very quiet outro. When the main instrumentation ends at 1:30, the sound of a heartbeat from the first track, "Speak to Me", appears, which appears again in 9/8, and gradually fades to silence.
Harmonically, the song consists of a repeating 4-bar chord progression: D, D/C, B♭maj7, and A7sus4 resolving to A7. The bass line is a descending tetrachord.
David Gilmour recorded two tracks of rhythm guitar, playing arpeggios, one in open position, and one much higher, around the tenth fret. The lower-pitched guitar part includes the open G and E strings during the B♭maj7, resulting in an added sixth and a dissonant augmented fourth. The quartet of female backing singers vary their parts, rising in volume, and echoing some of Roger Waters' lyrics, as the piece builds in intensity. On the last repetition of the chord progression, the B♭maj7 leads directly to a climax on D major, resulting in a "brightening" effect (known as the Picardy third), as the aforementioned implication of D minor in the B♭maj7 chord shifts to the major.
The final words sung on the song and, indeed the album The Dark Side of the Moon directs the listener, "and everything under the sun is in tune, but the sun is eclipsed by the moon." Waters explained the meaning of these words as well as the entire song by asserting:
Paul McCartney was one of the people interviewed by Waters as part of his efforts to develop dialogue to accompany certain songs on the album. His interview was not used, but Abbey Road Studios doorman Gerry O'Driscoll's was. His full answer to the question "What is 'the dark side of the moon'?", part of which is heard at 1:37 in "Eclipse", was: "There is no dark side in the moon, really. Matter of fact, it's all dark. The only thing that makes it look light is the sun."
A section of an orchestral version of the Beatles song "Ticket to Ride" can be heard faintly at the very end of the recording. This was unintended, the music was playing in the background at Abbey Road when Gerry O'Driscoll was being recorded. This is not included on the 1983 Japanese Black Triangle CD issue of the album or any FLAC remastered versions of the album; the sound technicians copied one of the heartbeat samples, removed the orchestral "Ticket to Ride", repeatedly pasted the sample in and faded out the new outro.
Usage
On 10 March 2004, the song was used to wake the Mars probe Opportunity. It was chosen in recognition of the transit of the Martian moon Phobos. This is not the first time Pink Floyd has been played in outer space; Russian cosmonauts took and played an advance copy of Delicate Sound of Thunder aboard Soyuz TM-7, making it the first album played in space.
The song was also used at the finale of the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony in London called "And in the end", immediately following the lighting of the cauldron by the seven young athletes. The song was played as a fireworks display took place and images of famous Olympians was projected onto the screen, climaxing with a view of the Olympic rings over the earth from a balloon launched at the beginning of the ceremony.
In The Sopranos episode "Mergers and Acquisitions", the song finishes when Tony Soprano wakes up from listening to all of The Dark Side of the Moon.
Alternative and live versions
Personnel
with: