Moving Pictures is the eighth studio album by Canadian rock band Rush, released on February 12, 1981, by Anthem Records.

After touring to support their previous album, Permanent Waves (1980), the band started to write and record new material in August 1980 with longtime co-producer Terry Brown.

During their stop in New York City a month prior, the band decided to scrap plans for a second live album in favor of making a new one in the studio.

[6] Lifeson looked back on this change of plan as the most important one in the band's history since the decision to record 2112 (1976), which became their breakthrough hit.

During the sessions their lyricist Pye Dubois suggested a song that he thought was suitable for Rush; this was developed into "Tom Sawyer", the opening track on Moving Pictures.

"The Camera Eye" was the first song to be worked on; the track was quickly followed by "Tom Sawyer", "Red Barchetta", the instrumental "YYZ", and "Limelight".

[4] Following these sessions, Rush returned to Phase One Studios with their longtime co-producer Terry Brown and prepared demos of these songs.

The tracks were refined even further during subsequent rehearsals for a series of warm-up shows across the US in September and October 1980, during which "Tom Sawyer" and "Limelight" were performed live for the first time.

It was the first Rush recording for which Lee used his 1972 Fender Jazz Bass, which provided a punchier lower end than he had been able to obtain with his usual Rickenbacker 4001.

[4] Peart's lyrics for "Red Barchetta" were inspired by the short story "A Nice Morning Drive" by Richard S. Foster, originally written in the November 1973 edition of the American car magazine Road & Track.

[10] Lee described the tale as "Orwellian in nature" which deals with an individual taking their Barchetta on a fast ride despite the banning of high speeds and is chased after by hovering patrol cars for breaking the law.

[7] Instead of an MGB roadster as featured in the original story, Peart reported the Ferrari 166 MM Barchetta was the car that inspired the song's title.

In 2007, Foster and Peart met for the first time and shared their mutual interest of BMW motorcycles, which was documented in an article titled "The Drummer, The Private Eye, and Me".

[8] It stemmed from the band's enjoyment of recording "La Villa Strangiato", a nine-minute instrumental on Hemispheres (1978); it was something they wanted to do again for Moving Pictures, only shorter.

The song contains two self-references: the first, the line "living in a fish-eye lens, caught in the camera eye" references the album's following track, "The Camera Eye", while the line "all the world's indeed a stage, and we are merely players", references the title of the band's first live album All the World's a Stage (1976), itself taken from William Shakespeare's comedy play As You Like It.

Its title refers to short pieces of the same name in the U.S.A. trilogy of novels written by American writer John Dos Passos, which Peart admired.

[11] The opening of the track features an audio clip of a busy Metropolis city from Richard Donner's Superman (1978)[4] "Witch Hunt" opens with faint voices which were recorded on the driveway Le Studio in sub-zero temperatures, with the band and studio staff shouting in a humorous way while drinking Scotch whisky.

The mover holding the Starman painting is Kelly Jay, singer of the Toronto band Crowbar who performed a show with Rush in 1973.

However, this conflicts with information provided in the Rush biography Chemistry, which states: "Hugh borrowed friends, neighbours and even his hairdresser's parents".

[15] Moving Pictures was played in its entirety during Lee's visit to Rick Ringer's radio show on CHUM-FM in Toronto, on February 11, 1981.

Sean Magee remastered the album from an analogue copy of the original digital master tape using a 192 kHz sample rate.

[36]Notes The 40th Anniversary Edition's Discs 2 and 3 were recorded live at Maple Leaf Gardens, Toronto, by Guy Charbonneau using Le Mobile Remote Recording – March 24 & 25 1981; Mixed by Terry Brown at Blue Sound & Music, Toronto, ON – December 2020 – February 2021; Technical Assistance: Russ Mackay; Mastered by Peter Moore – 2021.