Moving Pictures is the eighth studio album from Rush and is the one that non-Rush fanatics tend to include when picking great Canadian albums: top 20 in all three Chart Magazine polls (#15 in 1996, #8 in 2000, #18 in 2006), ninth in Bob Mersereau's The Top 100 Canadian Albums, 100th in CBC's 100 Greatest Canadian Albums Ever, and even 35th in the 2011 Mar*Star poll.
Moving Pictures was the most commercially successful Rush album, reaching #2 in Canada and #3 in the US and UK, and eventually going quadruple platinum in both Canada and the US. It is generally the most critically acclaimed Rush album as well: AllMusic gave it a perfect five stars and the New Rolling Stone Record Guide gave it 4 stars out of 5 (though the later Rolling Stone Album Guide downgraded that to 3.5 stars). Rolling Stone also named Moving Pictures the third greatest prog rock album of all-time.
The songs released as singles include "Limelight" (#18 Canada, #4 US Mainstream) and "Tom Sawyer" (#24 Canada, #8 US Mainstream), which still get airplay on classic rock radio, as do "Red Barchetta" (a car song set in a dystopian future) and "YYZ" (an instrumental named for Toronto's airport code).
Part of the pleasure of this album is the visual puns on the cover (movers moving pictures, people being emotionally moved by the pictures, a film crew making a motion picture), which was staged in front of Queen's Park and won the 1982 Juno Award for Best Album Graphics.
| Hometown: | Toronto |
| Label: | Anthem |
| Release Date: | 12 February 1981 |
| Producer: | Rush (Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson, Neil Peart), Terry Brown |
| Style: | progressive rock |
| Mar*Star 125: | did not rank |
| Mar*Star 150: | 42 |
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Track Listing
Personnel
