Classic 1977 Pink Floyd Album ‘Animals’ Gets Deluxe Reissue With Previously Unreleased Tracks
Pink Floyd has announced a 50th-anniversary box set celebrating their 1977 album, Animals.
The deluxe box set will include five CDs, featuring a rarities disc and a 1977 live show. It will also be available on Jan. 22 in two-LP, 1-LP, 2-CD, Blu-ray and digital formats.
The original four-and-a-half-minute radio edit of "Sheep," a promotional track released for radio in 1977 that has never been commercially available, can be heard below.
Listen to Pink Floyd's 'Sheep (Original Radio Edit)'
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Animals 50 arrives just a day after Pink Floyd's 10th album celebrates its 50th anniversary. The album was released on Jan. 21, 1977, reaching No. 3 in the U.S. and No. 2 in the U.K., marking the band's 10th consecutive Top 10 LP.
What's on the 50th-Anniversary Edition of Pink Floyd's 'Animals'?
The five-CD edition includes the original album, its 2018 remix, a rarities disc (featuring early versions of LP tracks and a studio jam), and a live performance recorded at the Oakland Coliseum Arena on May 9, 1977.
The concert recordings and rarities are all previously unreleased.
The track listing for Pink Floyd's Animals 50 is shown below.
What Do Pink Floyd Members Say About 'Animals'?
Animals was Pink Floyd's most political work at the time, focusing on mid-'70s social concerns in a country torn apart. Its famous cover art, designed by Hipgnosis, featured a 40-foot inflatable pig named Algie floating over the Battersea Power Station, representing "a capitalist monolith, crumbling at the core beneath the overbearing weight of greed, burgeoning bureaucracy and archaic infrastructure," according to Hipgnosis' Audrey Powell.
"I'd driven past Battersea Power Station every day going to and from my house in Clapham," explained Roger Waters in a press release announcing Animals 50. "I guess I just loved the building. I liked its symbolism that it's a power station and that it belches smoke, so there's something menacing about it.
"It's got four phallic chimneys, and it looks like an upside-down table. And there were four people in the band that had been turned upside down. It seemed like a really cool place for a pig to fly."
"The mood in music was changing in '77," David Gilmour added. "Punk music was hitting everything, and I suspect that had a little bit of an influence on the way we were working on the Animals album.
"I mean, it's quite an aggressive, stripped-back album. It was moving away from the sort of soundscapes that we had on Wish You Were Here. This album is more in your face and more rough and ready. And definitely the lyrics are a lot more aggressive from Roger. We had a lot of fun making it."
"There were all sorts of differences beginning to surface within the band, but in some ways Animals was a remarkably cohesive enterprise," noted Nick Mason. "The big thing was the development of Britannia Row. Britannia Row was this building we’d bought some few years before in which we’d actually started building our own recording studio.
We tried to design the studio in such a way that any of us could operate it and all the trunking was labelled clearly so anyone could plug in a set of headphones without someone else having to do it for us."
Pink Floyd, 'Animals 50' Track Listing
Disc 1 - Animals (Original album)
Pigs on the Wing 1
Dogs
Pigs (Three Different Ones)
Sheep
Pigs on the Wing 2
Disc 2 - Animals (2018 Remix)
Pigs on the Wing 1 - 2018 Remix
Dogs - 2018 Remix
Pigs (Three Different Ones) - 2018 Remix
Sheep - 2018 Remix
Pigs on the Wing 2 - 2018 Remix
Disc 3 - Rarities
Dogs - Early Version, Rough Mix*
Sheep - Original Radio Edit*
Sheep - Early Version, Rough Mix*
Studio Jam*
Young Nicholas Jon*
Discs 4 and 5 - Live from the Oakland Coliseum Arena, 1977
Sheep (Live from the Oakland Coliseum Arena, 1977)*
Pigs on the Wing 1 (Live from the Oakland Coliseum Arena, 1977)*
Dogs (Live from the Oakland Coliseum Arena, 1977)*
Pigs on the Wing 2 (Live from the Oakland Coliseum Arena, 1977)*
Pigs (Three Different Ones) (Live from the Oakland Coliseum Arena, 1977)*
Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Pts. 1-5) (Live from the Oakland Coliseum Arena, 1977)*
Welcome to the Machine (Live from the Oakland Coliseum Arena, 1977)*
Have a Cigar (Live from the Oakland Coliseum Arena, 1977)*
Wish You Were Here (Live from the Oakland Coliseum Arena, 1977)*
Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Pts. 6-9) (Live from the Oakland Coliseum Arena, 1977)*
Money (Live from the Oakland Coliseum Arena, 1977)*
Us and Them (Live from the Oakland Coliseum Arena, 1977)*
Careful with That Axe, Eugene (Live from the Oakland Coliseum Arena, 1977)*
* never before officially released
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Gallery Credit: Michael Gallucci
