The 50th anniversary edition of Pink Floyd’s 'Animals' is being released in multiple formats and a deluxe box set on January 22 through Sony Music. It features rare and unreleased music, alongside unseen photographs.
Animals 50 will be released in multiple formats, including a Deluxe Box Set, 1LP, 2LP, 2CD, Blu-Ray Audio and digital. The Deluxe Box Set contains 3 LPs: the original 1977 album, the 2018 Remix (remixed by James Guthrie), and a disc of five rarities that includes an unheard Roger Waters track titled ‘Young Nicholas Jon’ and previously unreleased early versions of ‘Sheep’ and ‘Dogs’.
There are 5 CDs mirroring the LPs, plus a 2-disc set of the May 9, 1977 Oakland show recorded live at the Oakland Coliseum Arena by a then 19 year old bootlegger, Reinhard Hohlwein, and the 1-disc Blu-Ray, which includes all of the above audio with the 2018 Remix being available in 5.1 and Dolby Atmos.
The Deluxe Box Set also features a 64-page hardback book comprising new sleeve notes from New York Times best-selling author Jonathan Lethem, an interview with Reinhard Hohlwein, and an excerpt from Hipgnosis’ Aubrey “Po” Powell’s memoir about the making of Animals’ album art.
The 1LP contains the original 1977 album in orange and sandstone color variants. The 2LP and 2CD sets contain the original 1977 album plus rarities, as does the digital release, which also features the Oakland show.
The first of the suite of rare and unheard music is ‘Sheep (Original Radio Edit)’; a four and a half minute, promo-only edit made for radio in 1977, which has never been commercially available until now, is available to listen to
here. Watch the visualizer
here.
Discussing the creation of the album art, Roger Waters says: “I’d driven past Battersea Power Station every day going to and from my house in Clapham. 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.”
Speaking on Animals, David Gilmour says: “The mood in music was changing in ’77. 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.”
Nick Mason says: “There were all sorts of differences beginning to surface within the band but in some ways Animals was a remarkably cohesive enterprise. 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.”
Earlier this year saw the release of 8-Tracks, a new official compilation project, featuring eight essential classics selected from the band’s 1971-79 era. This followed the 50th anniversary release of Wish You Were Here becoming a Top 10 charting album across the world, signaling Pink Floyd’s second #1 release of 2025 in the UK, Germany, Italy and Switzerland, 50 years after it first topped the charts. Seven months prior, the cinematic release of Pink Floyd at Pompeii - MCMLXXII became a Top 10 Box Office hit, and the accompanying soundtrack album earned the band’s first UK #1 album since 2014’s The Endless River - their final studio LP.
Pre-order Animals 50
here.
Track listings:
Deluxe Box Set
5CD
CD1: Animals (Original album)
CD2: Animals (2018 Remix)
CD3: Rarities
CD4: Live from the Oakland Coliseum Arena, 1977 Disc 1
CD5: Live from the Oakland Coliseum Arena, 1977 Disc 2
3LP
LP1: Animals (Original album)
LP2: Animals (2018 Remix)
LP3: Rarities
Blu-Ray
Animals - Original Stereo Mix (1977)
Animals - Remix: Stereo + 5.1 + Atmos (2018)
Rarities (Stereo Mix)
Live from the Oakland Coliseum Arena, 1977
Digital
“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” - RaritiesDogs - Early Version, Rough Mix*
Sheep - Original Radio Edit*
Sheep - Early Version, Rough Mix*
Studio Jam*
Young Nicholas Jon*
“Disc 4” - Live from the Oakland Coliseum Arena, 1977Sheep (Live)*
Pigs on the Wing 1 (Live)*
Dogs (Live)*
Pigs on the Wing 2 (Live)*
Pigs (Three Different Ones) (Live)*
Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Pts. 1-5) (Live)*
Welcome to the Machine (Live)*
Have a Cigar (Live)*
Wish You Were Here (Live)*
Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Pts. 6-9) (Live)*
Money (Live)*
Us and Them (Live)*
Careful with That Axe, Eugene (Live)*
* never before officially released
George Paul
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