“Money” by Pink Floyd

"Money" opens side two of The Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd's 1973 album, and it announces itself with the sound of commerce: a tape loop of ringing cash registers and jingling coins, chopped and spliced so the effects land right on the beat and count the band in. Then the band lurches in on a riff in 7/4, an odd, hobbling meter for a rock song, and makes it swing.

Roger Waters wrote it alone, words and music, and the track is as sardonic as that cash-register intro, swaggering like it's enjoying itself. David Gilmour sings it and cuts loose on electric guitar, Richard Wright colors it with Wurlitzer electric piano, Nick Mason drums, Dick Parry blows a greasy tenor saxophone, and Chris Adamson adds spoken vocals. Mason and Waters are both credited with tape too, which tells you how much of the track was built at the splicing block. Alan Parsons engineered, Chris Thomas mixed, and the band produced itself.

Pulled out as a single, it gave Pink Floyd their first American hit, reaching number 13 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 10 in Cash Box. They'd been playing it live since 1972, before the album was even out, and kept it in the set on most tours after; Gilmour cut a new version in 1981, and Waters released his own re-recording in 2023.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.