In honor of so much piggish behavior recently dominating the public sphere — and, oh, also in honor of the original album’s 50th anniversary — Sony Music will release “Animals 50,” a nine-disc deluxe boxed set focusing on Pink Floyd‘s 1977 “Animals” album, along with slimmed-down editions available in various formats. All of the releases are due to come out Jan. 22, 2027. The deluxe version includes five CDs, plus three LPs which repeats some of the same material in vinyl format, and a Blu-Ray that also features some of that same material along with 5.1 and Atmos mixes.
A digital version of the box’s contents will also be up for sale. The Blu-Ray component of the boxed set will be available for separate purchase, as will two-CD and two-LP editions that pair the original album with a rarities disc. Floyd fans have long known that not that much material was left on the cutting room floor when the band assembled the concept album back in the day.
But the “rarities” discs here do include one previously unreleased number penned by Roger Waters, titled “Young Nicholas Jon.” The other four tracks on the rarities disc, all previously released, include a “Studio Jam” plus “Dogs (Early Version, Rough Mix),” “Sheep (Early Version, Rough Mix)” and “Sheep (Original Radio Edit).” That latter four-and-a-half-minute radio edit of “Sheep” was obviously released to radio stations for airplay, but hadn’t appeared commercially for fans before. The track was released to DSPs as an advance taste of the unreleased music in conjunction with Thursday’s announcement. The live component is “Live From the Oakland Coliseum,” a 13-track show from May 9, 1977 that was captured by a bootlegger, Reinhard Hohlwein, who was 19 at the time.
The live set includes performances of both “Animals” and the preceding “Wish You Were Here” in their entirety, plus two “The Dark Side of the Moon” songs and the last-ever live performance of the instrumental “Careful With That Axe, Eugene.” Pink Floyd is notorious for not having professionally recorded very many, if any, concerts in the mid- and late ’70s, but this bootleg is said to have mixed and mastered to a level close enough to pro standards for an official release. (Back in April, similarly, for Record Store Day, Sony released an upgraded bootleg, “Pink Floyd Live From the Los Angeles Sports Arena, April 26th, 1975,” to officially represent the “Wish You Were Here” touring era on record.) Disc 1 of the deluxe set is the original version of “Animals,” and disc 2 is a remix that was done in 2018. It is referred to as “the 2018 mix,” even though it did not get released until 2022, following a few years of band disagreements that famously included a dispute over the liner notes. While all of the box’s audio elements will be available for sale individually, exclusive to the deluxe set are a 64-page hardback book with liner notes by author Jonathan Lethem, plus unpublished images from the original album cover photo shoot at Battersea Power Station in London, with pigs very much on the wing.
Boxed sets of most of Pink Floyd’s most loved albums have appeared in the past — with marbles, notably — but Sony has been eager to revisit the archives since purchasing all of the band’s music rights in 2024 for an estimated $400 million. One track that was speculated upon by fans as possibly being on this deluxe set — but is not — is a mix of “Pigs on the Wing” that combined Parts 1 and 2, which bookend the original album, into a single number, with the help of some additional sound effects during the segue. That single version, first heard on the 8-track configuration of “Animals” in 1977, was released anew in June of this year on “8-Tracks,” a greatest-hits compilation Sony Music issued.
That version of “Pigs on the Wing” is remaining exclusive to “8-Tracks.” Although the members of Pink Floyd have said they aren’t actively involved in current upgrades to the catalog subsequent to the catalog sale to Sony Music, statements from Roger Waters and David Gilmour were released as part of the announcement. 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.
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