The flying pig stayed. The Battersea Power Station and Four Smokestacks cover is part of Pink Floyd’s rich iconography.
“Animals” is wedged between “Wish You Were Here” and “The Wall”, but without notorious songs, not to say: hits.
Roger Waters wrote four of the record’s five meandering tracks alone, with only “Dogs,” the record’s 17-minute centerpiece and masterpiece, bearing David Gilmour’s signature.
Cultural pessimism with Orwellian symbolism
With the zoology of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm”, Waters varies the cultural pessimism and criticism of capitalism of earlier albums: The “Pigs” represent the big-headed and pharisaical moralizers, while the “Sheep” represent the docile and oppressed masses.
Pink Floyd, as the kings of the sluggish artificial, were punk bands’ main enemy in 1977, but “Animals” is intricately radical and beautiful.
Incidentally, the helium pig actually rose above Battersea, freed itself from the tethers and reached an altitude of four miles.