The Dystopian Novel That Inspired Pink Floyd’s ‘Animals’

Few bands are as well known for their masterful concept albums as Pink Floyd. Albums like The Wall are classics in rock canon. But before the band entered the mind of jaded rock star Pink, they built an album around the writing of George Orwell, with added inspiration from the birth of punk music.

Pink Floyd’s tenth album, Animals, was released in 1977. And although it’s not as well-known and beloved as The Wall, it’s an important piece of the band’s history.

From Animal Farm to Animals

Orwell’s famous 1945 novel Animal Farm presents a satirical exploration of Stalin’s regime and the Russian Revolution of 1917, with each social class represented by a different animal. The animals decide to rebel against their human farmer, but a dictatorship takes hold, led by pig Napoleon.

Animals, however, is bassist Roger Waters’ commentary on the state of Britain in the mid-1970s. Specifically the issues of “strikes, inflation and unemployment,” according to Pink Floyd’s website. The album uses many of the same tools Orwell did with Animal Farm. Waters represents the country’s social classes as pigs, dogs, and sheep. Here, the pigs are the ruling class, and the dogs aspire to be like them, while the sheep represent the mindless working masses being exploited by the dogs. The album is bookended by the acoustic love song “Pigs on the Wing.”

The cover was also Waters’ idea and was designed by Hipgnosis. It depicts an inflatable pig floating between two chimneys at Battersea Power Station, which represents “a capitalist monolith, crumbling at the core beneath the overbearing weight of greed, burgeoning bureaucracy and archaic infrastructure,” according to Hipgnosis’ Audrey Powell.

As for its sound, David Gilmour credited the burgeoning punk scene at the time with some influence.

“The mood in music was changing in ’77,” Gilmour said. “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.”

Now, five decades later, Animals isn’t just a relic of 1970s Britain. Its themes are just as relevant now as they were then, making it a timeless piece of Pink Floyd’s discography.

Photo by Koh Hasebe/Shinko Music/Getty Images