The skinny on the net is that the Dark Side Of The Moon cover:


This one.

...Is the single most widely recognized graphic in the world. I'd postulate that the reason is that the lyrics on the album are basically applicable to any culture, any person, anywhere, and are quite unambiguous in their melancholy statements of the hard truths we all live with, rather than being "Ooh baby lemme hold your hand" or such and such that music is mostly known for in modern culture.

Now, I am a lyricist myself, though not quite professional level (yet), so I have an intellectual interest in lyrics. I'll start by citing this quatrain, which opens the album, from "Breathe":

Breathe, breathe in the air.
Don't be afraid to care.
Leave, don't leave me.
Look around, choose your own ground.

The first thing I'd notice and comment on is the odd rhyme scheme, AABC. This isn't held up in the next quatrain of this type over the same chordal section repeated (verse 2, you might say, though it's not really a verse/chorus type song):

Run, rabbit, run.
Dig that hole, forget the sun.
And when at last the work is done,
Don't sit down, it's time to dig another one.

AAAA.

Anyway, the cool thing about this being the first singing you hear on the record is that it's telling you, "I'm not trying to attack you. Relax." At least, that's how it's coming off to me. The album goes on to cover lots of emotional ground after that, and can get quite dark (starting in fact on the next track, "On The Run," which coincidentally has no lyrics, strangely), so you might consider Breathe to be a vaccine against the dire heaviness which is coming, though it is not sunshiny and happy enough to dilute the potency of it.

Before I keep going...let's see what anyone else here might have to say.