Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia - The Chart Side of the Moon Edition
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Slate
3.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 16 July 2026
⏱️ 57 minutes
🔗️ Recording | Apple Podcasts | RSS
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Summary
Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon is one of the most played, purchased and praised albums of all time. Yet its enduring legacy might be its supernatural chart longevity. Officially, the 1973 long-player has spent nearly a thousand weeks on the Billboard album chart. But that number probably understates its past performance, not to mention its future potential, with new generations of teenagers discovering Dark Side every year
Join Chris Molanphy as he explores Pink Floyd's deathless totem and traces the band’s evolution from ’60s psychedelic curios to dorm-room poster icons. Will Dark Side be able to hold onto the all-time Billboard record into the 2030s?
Podcast production by Kevin Bendis.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Hit Parade, a podcast of Pop Chart History from Slate magazine, about the hits from |
| 0:18.3 | coast to coast. |
| 0:19.4 | I'm Chris Malanfi, chart analyst, pop critic, and writer |
| 0:22.8 | of Slate's Why is this song number one series on today's show. Around the 4th of July, I took a look |
| 0:29.6 | at Billboard's current album sales charts. These are the ones that reflect pure LP sales, not streams. |
| 0:37.0 | I was looking at top album sales and top vinyl albums, |
| 0:41.5 | and I couldn't help but notice an outlier. |
| 0:44.6 | Sure, current acts are selling, |
| 0:46.5 | whether it's the Olivia's, Rodrigo, and Dean. |
| 1:01.2 | Or not... or Noah Khan or Bad Bunny or BTS. |
| 1:14.2 | And sure, there are plenty of classic 20th century LPs still selling well. |
| 1:15.2 | Rumors. |
| 1:15.8 | Thriller. |
| 1:17.0 | Purple Rain. Oh, no, let's go. |
| 1:18.7 | Let's go crazy. |
| 1:21.0 | Let's get nuts. |
| 1:22.5 | Legend. |
| 1:23.4 | Metallica. |
| 1:24.4 | Reasonable doubt. |
| 1:25.3 | I'm still spending money for 88. What? President is to present me. I'm out for present. Metallica, reasonable doubt. But no LP on either one of these sales charts is older than Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon, from 1973. |
| 1:43.3 | New buyers are still discovering it in 2026. On the vinyl |
| 1:49.2 | albums chart, Darkside is in its 390th week, currently ranked number 18. On the top album sales |
... |
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