Any Colour You Like: The Illusion of Choice on Dark Side of the Moon

The instrumental “Any Colour You Like” occupies a strange slot on The Dark Side of the Moon — it’s wedged between the weary pacifism of “Us and Them” and the personal unraveling of “Brain Damage.” On its own it’s a synth-heavy jam built around a looping sequence and a funky guitar figure, but it functions as a glitch in the album’s narrative, a moment where the machine of society runs idle. The title is a dry English joke: Henry Ford once said customers could have the Model T “in any colour so long as it’s black.” The phrase “any colour you like” therefore promises infinite options while actually offering none.

Musically, the track’s mechanistic pulse — generated by a VCS 3 synthesizer and tape loops — mirrors the album’s theme of modern life as a conveyor belt. The ascending chord progression never resolves, just cycles, suggesting that the choices we think we’re making are illusions within a rigid system. It’s the moment before the final collapse into “Brain Damage,” where conformity finally breaks the protagonist. The piece doesn’t need lyrics to argue that freedom of choice, under capitalism or madness, is often a cruel joke.