The songs are from awesome to only okay, Sheep is a masterpiece the rest are good to decent. Wow i dont see the greatness all gives it, its not my favorite from Pink Floyd.

I like the album but it is just maybe a strong 7/10.

Believe me, to those of us growing up in a rather bleak 1970's Britain, it was a revelation, and revolutionary, in its way.

Though I don't like Animals as much as DSOTM or WYWH, I don't think it is much overrated.

I like the album, and the concert at Anaheim Stadium was out of this world, but I have to admit that I liked the original versions wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy better.

 

The early PF makes sense if you are familiar with the 60's.

 

If all you know is the late 70's and 80's and such, that stuff won't make a whole lot of sense.

Some say that Good Girl Gone Bad is loosely based upon Orwell's Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and that Umbrellaellaella is a serious critique of corporate-media pigeonholing in a crypto-post-anarchic society, a theme that continues into Don't Stop The Music. It is rumoured that Rehab was a re-working of an older song called Cravin' and Dribblin' 

I've heard that theory too. Honestly GGGB has a much stronger concept to it than Animals ever did. Animals is too convoluted to really reach the audience at the same level as GGGB. I wonder if Rihanna's other work has the same brilliant underlining layers?

I'm going to check out her debut and work my way up. 

It did however, have a pig.

It was, ironically, this album's tour which would lead to Waters writing the Wall, and eschewing completely stadium rock.

I mean musically. The 1977 stadium-filling In The Flesh tour is secondary (though it did have its Spinal Tap moments).

Its the whole album as an epic Rock album rather than any of the individual tracks resembling the anthemic format of 80s stadium rock songs. There were many bands in the 70s filling stadiums but they were playing versions of studio tracks that would play just as well in a small venue as in large arenas, and that includes DSotM and WYWH (if you ignore the stage performance and just listen to the albums). Given that two of the tracks on Animals were written before WYWH, Aminals (in my contention) was one of the first albums that Floyd produced specifically to be played in large venues. The composition and production of the album just has that stadium rock feel for me.

WYWH (song) is certainly a stadium rock song and has that sing-a-long, lighters-held-aloft chorus but it didn't actually feature in the accompanying 1975 tour at all (though two pre-Animals tracks Raving and Drooling (Sheep) You've Got to Be Crazy (Dogs) did).

Totally agree. Doesn't deserve to be in the top 10. "Dogs" is good for a few minutes, but gets boring, and don't like how it ends with slightly worse lyrics than how it began  Not many of the attractive qualities of Pink Floyd are present here (everything that makes Dark Side great) but otherwise some fantastic moments. Like you it would a 7, erring on 8/10 album.

Very well said!! 

Animals - Masterpiece

I quite like the idea of a song being nearly boring.

 

But was it pink?

 

At least at Anaheim Stadium it was very good. Compared to the bootleg version of "Pigs" at Anaheim stadium it has an extended guitar part that might be considered a power ballad. Sort of! But the background singers did have Spandex, and about that sing-a-long, we might have to define that a bit better!

Tell me another story, Ronnie, tell me another! 

Fairly sure the pig was Pink at the Wembley show. However, I seriously doubt that the backing singers wore Spandex™ because as far as I am aware they didn't use backing singers on the In The Flesh tour.

I saw them during that tour (Cleveland Stadium, World Series of Rock -- had to drive back to Detroit afterward completely stoned). And if I recall correctly, there were no background singers, because Floyd played both the Wish You Were Here and Animals albums in full, with only a few other songs thrown in as encores.

But the pig was definitely pink (and I also vaguely remember big puppets?). And everyone did sing-along to "Wish You Were Here". And I was in a stadium. But I wasn't wearing spandex. 

Whoever thought Animals was overrated needs their head examined. If anything, it's underrated.

I was reminded of this Animals album coveer yesterday when I saw THE SIMPSONS MOVIE. The Pig was sent sailing over the reactor plant when Burns siad if Pigs could fly.... very funny. great album... underrated.... overrated... all of the above... its a damn classic!

I don't think so. Echoes is by far the best thing Floyd ever did - one of the best moments in all prog.

Animals is a very fine album, though.

Strange - my main problem with "Sheep" is the guitar tone is way too wimpy. Finally they get to rock out, what I always wanted to hear, and the guitar sounds way too clean to fit the music.

From what I remember, I liked "Dogs" okay, but not the rest of the album. I'm not a huge Pink Floyd fan. Count Animals as a great example of that. It's not a bad album, it just leaves me cold like most of Floyd's stuff does.

Well...thanks for stopping by. 

I always thought it was Wish You Were Here that was way overrated.

WYWH is musical perfection. Hercules makes a good point too in that " Echoes" off Meddle might be their best piece

A good post until you had to slam Dark Side of the Moon for no good reason. It is a masterpiece and it's not because I said it was, it's because it continues to be recognized year after year as one not only by fans, critics, but also other musicians. Steve Hackett said Dark Side of the Moon was his favorite prog album. Pretty high praise indeed coming from someone who worked in another one of the greatest prog bands of all time: Genesis.

Dark Side of the Moon is loved by an unprecedented number of non-prog fans and prog fans alike -- that is known as "universal praise", if you weren't aware. Unprecedented and universal, and according to billboard.com:

But your 'argument' denies the facts. It's one thing to not like the album, but it's a completely different 'animal' (haha..cool pun huh?) to make the accusation that Dark Side is overrated due to it's apparent popularity. I don't think these guys had any idea that this album was going to chart the kind of success it has received. Simply put, this masterpiece is revered and with good reason: it's a seamless blend of utter genius and human emotion.

 there is hope yet!! Even though most of us respect opinions, these long winded opinions of WYWH and DSOTM are highly amusing

I think you are wrong because you are looking at it retrospectively. You have no choice in this because you were not a record-buying teenager in 1973.

The mass-appeal of DSotM had little to do with the minimalist cover art (other albums had that) or the cool title with "Dark" in the name (there was another album called Dark Side Of The Moon released the previous year that went nowhere even though the band in question scored a #3 single from their follow up album two months after Floyd released their DSotM). It wasn't even the result of a massive advertising promotion by EMI, because there wasn't one and in the UK it wasn't the result of radio-play or an attention-grabbing hit-single, because it had neither of those either.

Pre-bloody-cisely. You were not there so anything you say about how or why it became so popular can only be speculative, and in this case I believe, incorrect. 

No one can actually pin-point why it became successful, as much as anything it became successful in spite of itself - (just like Tubular Bells did) it wasn't an instant "hit", it just burbled along selling well, just as Meddle had done before it (Meddle spent 80+ weeks in the UK album charts but never higher than #3). 

I love Animals. Probably my fave Floyd album and not overated IMO.

I think the best explanation anyone came up with is that it coincided with that time when all our parents suddenly got new hi-fi systems on the never-never. DSOTM (and Tubular Bells, for that matter) were perfect for cool hip people to show off their new super–duper decks (man).

I never said WYWH is a bad album or that it shouldn't be anybody's favourite album.  Well, I think you would relate to my point better if you looked at the RYM charts for Pink Floyd.  WYWH (4.31) and DSOTM (4.29) are comfortably at the top (with WYWH edging out even DSOTM) while Animals is quite a bit lower at 4.12 and Meddle even lower at 4.02.  My point is simply that as a hardcore Floyd fan, I simply don't see this huge gap between WYWH and say Animals or Wall.  Animals may not deliver the same experience as WYWH but it's just a different side of the band.  A hardcore fan tends to embrace more facets of a band while a casual fan is more interested in the ones that tick all the 'must have' boxes of the genre.  In Floyd's case, from a prog perspective, that album is WYWH so it's not surprising it is rated the highest.  Ditto with SEBTP.  It's not that I don't like the album and I have personally rated both Cryme and SEBTP the same.  But I just don't see this gulf between Cryme and SEBTP; it's a different side of the band, that's all.  At the same time, I do understand why non fans or casual fans would gravitate towards WYWH or SEBTP respectively and far be it for me to grudge their choice.

Yes, that is a great explanation for Dark Side's enduring appeal and also the reason why it will be hard to make another Dark Side.  An album that sums up so many of our worldly anxieties in just a few words will always have an audience.

 

That pretty much sums up what I was going to post about DSOTM.

 

If one looks at the ratings here on PS there isn't much difference.

DSOTM 4.59

WYWH 4.62

Animals 4.52

It's simply a matter of which one you like the best on personal reasons.

I think the lines quite clearly, read with context, refer to our perception of time, to the 'time is running out' cliche.  Because scientifically speaking, it's not the sun that's going down and coming up behind you again.  '

And I would disagree with your second para, since you asked.  I consider DSOTM lyrically superior to all those three albums and there's also an overall coherence which kind of makes it one long prog epic rather than a bunch of songs.  If you look at it as a bunch of songs and disregard the lyrics, you are not going to like DSOTM very much indeed.