Animals is the tenth studio album by the English rock band Pink Floyd, released on 21 January 1977 through Harvest Records and Columbia Records. It was self-produced at Pink Floyd's Britannia Row Studios in London throughout 1976. The album continued the long-form compositions that made up their previous works, including Wish You Were Here (1975).
Animals is both a progressive rock album and a concept album, focusing on the sociopolitical conditions of mid-1970s Britain, and signaled a change in style. Tension within the band during production culminated in keyboardist Richard Wright's being fired two years later. The album's cover, conceived by the band's bassist and lead songwriter Roger Waters and designed by long-time collaborator Storm Thorgerson, shows an inflatable pig floating between two chimneys of Battersea Power Station.
Pink Floyd released no singles from Animals but promoted it through the In the Flesh tour. Waters' agitation with audiences during this tour inspired their next album, The Wall (1979). Animals reached number 2 in the UK and number 3 in the US. It initially received mixed reviews, but gained more favourable reviews in later years, and is considered one of the band's best works.
Recording
In 1975, Pink Floyd bought a three-storey block of church halls at 35 Britannia Row in Islington, north London. Their deal with Harvest Records' parent company EMI for unlimited studio time in return for a reduced percentage of sales had expired, and they converted the building into a recording studio and storage facility. Its construction took up most of 1975, and in April 1976 the band started work on their tenth studio album, Animals, at the new facility.
Animals was engineered by a previous Floyd collaborator, Brian Humphries, and recording took place at Britannia Row from April to December 1976, continuing into early 1977. "Raving and Drooling" and "You've Got to Be Crazy", two songs previously performed live and considered for Wish You Were Here, reappeared as "Sheep" and "Dogs" respectively. They were reworked to fit the new concept, and separated by a Waters-penned composition, "Pigs (Three Different Ones)".
The only other new composition, "Pigs on the Wing" (split into two parts to start and end the album), contains references to Waters' private life; his new romantic interest was Carolyne Anne Christie (who was married to Rock Scully, manager of the Grateful Dead, when she met Waters).
With the exception of "Dogs" (co-written by David Gilmour) the album's five tracks were written by Waters. Gilmour was distracted by the birth of his first child, and contributed little else towards the songwriting of the album. Similarly, neither Mason nor Wright contributed as much as they had on previous albums, and Animals was the first Pink Floyd album not to contain a composer's credit for Wright.
The band had discussed employing another guitarist for future tours, and Snowy White was invited into the studio. When Waters and Mason inadvertently erased one of Gilmour's completed guitar solos, White was asked to record a solo on "Pigs on the Wing". Although his performance was omitted from the vinyl release, it was included on the 8-track cartridge version. White performed on the Animals tour. Mason recalled that he enjoyed working on Animals more than Wish You Were Here.
Concept
Loosely based on George Orwell's political fable Animal Farm, the album's lyrics describe various classes in society as different kinds of animals: the predatory dogs, the despotic ruthless pigs, and the "mindless and unquestioning” herd of sheep. Whereas the novella focuses on Stalinism, the album is a critique of capitalism and differs again in that the sheep eventually rise up to overpower the dogs. The album was developed from a collection of unrelated songs into a concept which, in the words of author Glenn Povey, "described the apparent social and moral decay of society, likening the human condition to that of mere animals".