After the album "Wish You Were Here", brimming with sweet, atmospheric, and ethereal passages, where Richard Wright's keyboards and synthesizers take center stage, came "Animals", a concept album based on George Orwell's "Animal's Farm", in which various groups in society are represented as animals. Dogs represent the law, pigs represent the leaders, and sheep represent the people. Throughout the album, Waters equates humans with each of these three animal species. Although Orwell's novel focuses on Stalinist communism, the album is a critique of the worst aspects of capitalism. With "Animals", Pink Floyd entered their third phase, that of "songwriter rock," where Roger Waters is the band's leader, a group where the lyrics matter as much as, or even more than, the music. "Animals" also represents a shift into a much darker territory than the previously explored, spacey themes that Pink Floyd had rarely touched upon. Whether this was a response to the punk movement or a reflection on English society at the time and the allegorical and sociopolitical/philosophical meaning that Waters was trying to convey, Pink Floyd would once again astonish the world, achieving another masterpiece after two previous albums that were equally impressive and absolute magnum opuses of contemporary music. Composed of three epic, somber, and mysterious tracks "Dogs", "Pigs (Three Different Ones)", and "Sheep" where energetic and heavy rock guitars take center stage, plus two acoustic ballads, "Pigs on the Wing, Part 1" and "Pigs on the Wing, Part 2", Pink Floyd would once again create a masterpiece, following two previous albums that were equally impressive and absolute magnum opuses of contemporary music.
