The Wizard of Oz Meets Pink Floyd Perfectly In ‘The Dark Side of the Rainbow’

L.Frank Baum’s ‘The Wizard of Oz’ is one of the most iconic films in classic cinema. Similarly‘The Dark Side of the Moon’ by Pink Floyd is often hailed as one of the greatest albums of all time. But, what happens when you mix the two of them up? You get the ultimate progressive rock/classic cinema crossover that is perfectly in sync.

‘The Wizard of Oz’ and Dark Side of the Moon, perfectly in sync

The name of this insane crossover is ‘The Dark Side of the Rainbow’. On one side, we have arguably the greatest album of all time by Pink Floyd. On the other hand, we have one of Hollywood’s most iconic films, ‘The Wizard of Oz’.

What happens is that as soon as the MGM lion roars in ‘The Wizard of Oz’, you start playing the album. As the movie and the album progress, they perfectly line up with each other. We’re not just talking about the movement of the actors. In fact, the emotions of ‘The Wizard of Oz’ sync with sentiments of the songs too, and vice versa. It truly feels surreal when you hear/look at it yourself. No one knows who did it first, but the public came to know of it through Charles Savage. If you don’t believe me, you can watch it with your own eyes:

There are several moments when ‘The Wizard of Oz’  and Pink Floyd’s album sync seamlessly with each other. For example, Dorothy started to run right after the line from ‘Time’, “no one told you where to run”. Moreover, David Gilmour’s line “home, home again” from ‘Breathe’ syncs with the fortune teller telling Dorothy to return to Kansas.

And if that wasn’t enough, there’s another spooky coincidence. When Dorothy meets the scarecrow, where he sings ‘If Only I Had A Brain’, Roger Waters sings “got to keep the loonies on the path” from ‘Brain Damage’! Finally, the last heartbeats from the album sync perfectly with the moment Dorothy puts her head on Tin Man’s chest in ‘The Wizard of Oz’.

Is it a coincidence, or a conspiracy?

So, did the creator of ‘The Wizard of Oz,’  have some telepathic connection with Pink Floyd? Or did Pink Floyd, Roger Waters, and David Gilmour write down the album keeping ‘The Wizard of Oz’ in mind? You can bet that people asked members of Pink Floyd about this. Their sound engineer, Alan Parsons, said:

“There simply wasn’t mechanics to do it, we had no means of playing videotapes in the room at all. I don’t think VHS had come along by ’72, had it?”

Moreover, the Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason also denied this theory, saying:

“It’s absolute nonsense. It has nothing to do with ‘The Wizard of Oz’. It was all based on The Sound of Music.”

There isn’t a grand conspiracy play here that Pink Floyd played with ‘The Wizard of Oz’. In the end, there’s a simple explanation to all this – it’s just a coincidence. Basically, our minds sync any kind of music with what we see at the screen. This phenomenon has been proven with many other albums and movies. For instance, Pink Floyd’s Echoes lines up perfectly with ‘2001: A Space Odessey’. Moreover, Yellow Submarine by The Beatles also lines up perfectly with ‘The Little Mermaid’. The fact is that these are just coincidences. Michael Stevens from Vsauce explained it in one of his videos:

“They’re just accidental music videos. The product of selection bias, confirmation bias, and the law of ‘near enough’. A behavior of our pattern sensitive minds. Two things don’t have to line up exactly or literally for us to see a connection.

That is the story behind ‘The Wizard of Oz’ and this iconic album from Pink Floyd lining up perfectly. The spooky perfection of ‘The Dark Side of the Rainbow’ nothing but a coincidence.