Pink Floyd’s ‘Animals’ Songs Ranked From Worst to Best

Pink Floyd's storied career had several pivotal moments. There was Syd Barrett's late-'60s departure and David Gilmour's revival of the group in the late-'80s. In both cases, Pink Floyd would be utterly transformed.

Same with 1977's Animals. Roger Waters' quickly awakening muse took center stage as he explored a savage theme straight out of George Orwell's Animal Farm where everyday creatures possess dark human emotions. Fellow co-founder Richard Wright took a backseat. So did Gilmour, at least to a degree.

Animals emerged on Jan. 23, 1977, as a hard-eyed rebuke of gluttony and the thirst for power. Waters emerged as the band's sharp-elbowed leader. There'd never before been a Pink Floyd album without a writing contribution by Wright. This creative shift would shape the next two Pink Floyd albums, before Waters ultimately departed.

'Animals' Marked the Beginning of a Period of Change

As Waters (and his vocals) became more prominent, his work became more personal. Pink Floyd was no longer a collective effort but a vehicle for Waters' narratives, with Animals as the fulcrum. For now, however, a shaky truce still held.

Gilmour is only credited with one co-write, but it was the nearly side-long "Dogs." They still dabbled a bit in Pink Floyd's heralded earlier experimentalism: The sound of barking on the same track deftly morphs into a keyboard solo by Wright. Gilmour switched to bass to create a thrilling rumble on "Sheep."

London's Battersea Power Station became famous after appearing on the cover of 'Animals.' (Terry Fincher / Hulton Archive, Getty Images)

Animals helped Pink Floyd return to the U.S. and U.K. Top 5; again, they went multi-platinum. But the band's delicate alchemy had changed. By the time 1979's follow-up The Wall arrived, Wright had been ousted; he wouldn't return as a full-time member until 1994's The Division Bell, long after Waters was gone.

In keeping with its turbulent history, Animals then became the subject of a drawn-out remix process. Plans were first discussed in 2018, but the sides couldn't agree on how to move forward. Years passed. The finished project, now titled Animals 2018 Remix, finally arrived in 2022.

The Legacy of Pink Floyd's 'Animals'

By then, its cover image of an inflated pig high above London's Battersea Power Station had become the stuff of legend. Plans were announced in late 2026 to convert a portion of the pictured building into an intimate concert venue. Apple was adapting the space into a 600-seat theater within the company's European headquarters at Battersea.

READ MORE: Ranking Every Pink Floyd Album

That followed the early-2026 release of 8-Tracks, a new compilation with the full-length take of "Pigs on the Wing" that was previously only available on an obscure earlier edition of Animals. Next, they confirmed a expanded 50th anniversary edition, with a never-before-released San Francisco show from the era.

So, how does the album hold up after all these years? Here's a ranked look back at every edgy, passionate song from Pink Floyd's Animals:

 
No. 5. "Pigs on the Wing (Part One)"

A surprisingly delicate song dedicated to Waters' now-former wife Carolyne begins a tough album where Pink Floyd pushed back against any lingering notion that they'd grown soft into middle age. Today, it's clear that Animals also represents the first stirrings of a more political bent that would dominate Waters' recordings past his association with the group he co-founded. He'd follow this up with The Wall, Waters' most personal album, his greatest individual triumph — but also the stone that dragged Pink Floyd down.

 
No. 4. "Pigs on the Wing (Part Two)"

Waters ended Animals with the second part of this acoustic song – and a big surprise. Both segments are essentially the same length, but that's where the similarities end. After bearing witness to the ghastly debauchery, violence and greed of the LP's various anthropomorphized main characters, "Part Two" actually lets in the smallest glimmer of hope. "I thought it was very necessary," Waters admitted to Capitol Radio back then, "otherwise the album would have been a kind of rage."

READ MORE: Top 10 Pink Floyd '80s Songs
 
No. 3. "Sheep"

"Sheep" is all rage. As Pink Floyd wrestled with existential and deeply emotional matters on Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here, Waters was trying to give shape to the follow-up. An unfinished thought called "Raving and Drooling" morphed into "Sheep." "Sometime in the middle of the recording," Waters told Capitol Radio, "it seemed like the right thing to tie it all together." His updated song angrily confronted government and religious oppression, establishing themes that Waters more fully explored on The Wall.

 
No. 2. "Pigs (Three Different Ones)"

A remix of Animals was delayed for years over its proposed liner notes, which Gilmour apparently felt were weighted toward Waters. "On Animals, I was the prime musical force," Gilmour told rock critic Robert Sandall. The galloping "Pigs," though only credited to Waters, seems to make the argument. His fury at a rigged system is paired with the kind of rock-song momentum long associated with Waters' erstwhile guitar-playing partner, even while the lyric points to his own didactic future on 1983's The Final Cut.

READ MORE: Ranking Every Pink Floyd Live Album
 
No. 1. "Dogs"

Like "Sheep," "Dogs" was reworked from an earlier song idea titled "You Gotta Be Crazy." Unlike "Sheep," which included important outside contributions, Gilmour received a co-writing credit. In fact, he's estimated that "90 percent of 'Dogs' was mine – so that's half of Animals." Still, there was no getting around the band's foundational changes – and the growing rift between them: "The more it became all Roger," Gilmour later told Creem, "the less really interesting it became."

Listen to David Gilmour on the 'UCR Podcast'