Pigs (Three Different Ones) (17:31)

“Pigs (Three Different Ones)” is a song from Pink Floyd’s 1977 album Animals. In the album’s three parts, “Dogs,” “Pigs,” and “Sheep,” pigs represent the people whom Roger Waters considers to be at the top of the social ladder, the ones with wealth and power; they also manipulate the rest of society and encourage them to be viciously competitive and cutthroat, so the pigs can remain powerful. Waters suggests that the pigs manipulate the dogs in the lines “Gotta admit, that I’m a little bit confused/Sometimes it seems to me, as if I’m just being used” in the song “Dogs.”

The first verse refers to no one in particular, but rather businessmen in general. The second verse indirectly refers to the opposition leader at that time, Margaret Thatcher, although her name or title is never mentioned. The lyrics’ offensiveness to Thatcher is subtle, stating that she is “good fun with a hand gun;” better-defined obscenities are prevalent when it refers to her as a “bus-stop rat bag” and “fucked-up old hag”.

The third mentions Mary Whitehouse by name, painting her as a prudish, sexually repressed “house-proud town mouse.” This contributed to Whitehouse’s negative image of Pink Floyd, who she thought were immorally promoting sex and drugs.

Halfway through the song, David Gilmour uses a Heil talk box on the guitar solo to mimic the sound of pigs. This is the first use of a talk box by Pink Floyd.

In some cassette tape versions of the album in the US, this song was divided into two parts after the first verse, in order to minimize the total length of tape.