How Roger Waters Adapted Animal Farm for Pink Floyd's 'Animals'

The most direct takeaway: Waters used Orwell’s farm animals as class labels for 1970s Britain, but replaced the book’s hopeful ending with pure cynicism. In Animal Farm, the pigs eventually become indistinguishable from humans. In “Animals,” Waters doesn’t even pretend a revolution is possible—the pigs are already in charge, the dogs keep order, and the sheep are too stupid to protest.

Specific Orwell references are everywhere. The “Dogs” song draws from the dogs Napoleon uses to murder dissenters—Waters turns them into corporate predators “who let themselves be led by the nose.” The line “stone” in “Dogs” echoes the book’s use of stone as a tool for oppression. The “Sheep” directly quote the sheep’s chant “Four legs good, two legs bad” but twist it: “You gotta be trusted by the people that you lie to / And that lie is the truth.” The pigs, of course, are the capitalists and political hypocrites, updated from Orwell’s Soviet allegory to target British greed and class rigidity.

Waters also added a layer missing from