Animals is a 1977
concept album by
Pink Floyd, loosely reminiscent of
George Orwell's book
Animal Farm. It was recorded at the band's
Britannia Row Studios in
London.
Animals was the first album to be predominantly written by bass player/singer/lyricist
Roger Waters. Singer and guitarist
David Gilmour only co-wrote one track which was the epic "
Dogs" as tensions in the band were increasing. Musically, Animals consisted of songs written before
Wish You Were Here. The track "Dogs" was originally called "You Gotta Be Crazy". The song "
Sheep" started as "Raving and Drooling". Arguably, the exclusion of those two tracks from
Wish You Were Here was the start of the rift between Waters and Gilmour but the two made up the majority of the
Animals album. This was the first Pink Floyd album that keyboard player
Rick Wright did not contribute to the writing of the album due to either writer's block or because Waters was refusing musical ideas Wright came up with.
The
Animals album was originally released on
January 23,
1977 in the
UK on Harvest Records, and released on
2 February 1977 in the
United States and
Canada on Columbia Records.
Although
Animals quickly reached #3 on The Billboard U.S. Album charts in March of 1977 (kept out of #1 in the US by
Hotel California by
The Eagles which was at #2 and the
soundtrack album to the
Barbra Streisand film
A Star is Born which was #1), it quickly fell off the charts, most likely due to the fact the five songs it contained were three unusually long songs and two very short bookending songs, none of which would make likely singles, keeping the album from getting airplay on American rock radio. Due to this, the album was on the charts for only six months, as opposed to
The Dark Side of the Moon's 30-year-plus chart run and
Wish You Were Here staying on the charts for over a year. Although it went
Gold (500,000 copies sold) on
12 February 1977 and Platinum (1 million copies sold) on
10 March 1977 in the U.S.; critics and others labeled
Animals a critical and commercial disappointment in comparison to
Dark Side of the Moon and
Wish You Were Here's ongoing massive sales. However, to date,
Animals has continued to sell solidly with over four million copies sold in the U.S. alone and seven million worldwide and is currently listed as Quadruple Platinum by the
Recording Industry Association of America.
A digitally remastered
CD (sourced from the 1992
Shine On box set) was subsequently released on EMI in Europe in 1994. Columbia Records released this remaster in 1997 for North America. The 1992 remaster was then re-released (with UK 1994 artwork) on
25 April 2000 on Capitol Records in the U.S. and EMI elsewhere, and is currently the most recent CD issue of the album.
It marked the first-ever appearance of the
Pink Floyd pig. For the
8-track version of Animals, guitarist
Snowy White was brought in to play a short guitar solo which would combine "
Pigs on the Wing 1" with "Pigs on the Wing 2" into one whole song; "
Pigs (Three Different Ones)" was split between two programmes.
Animals
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