 Brazilian promotional single | |
| Released | January 21, 1977(album, UK) February 12, 1977(album, US) |
| Recorded | April - May, 1976 |
| Genres | Progressive rock |
| Studio | Britannia Row Studios |
| Length | 11:28(album) 4:03(single) |
| Label | Harvest(UK) Columbia/CBS(US) |
| Vocalists | Roger Waters |
| Songwriters | Roger Waters |
| Producers | Pink Floyd |
Info:
- In the album's three parts, "Dogs", "Pigs", "Sheep", pigs represent the people whom Roger Waters considers to be at the top of society, the ones with wealth and power; they manipulate the rest of society and encourage them to be viciously competitive and cutthroat, so they 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 she's never mentioned by name or title. 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 was immorally promoting sex and drugs. Some people misconstrued "Hey You Whitehouse" as "Hey You White House" as in taking a shot at the U.S. political climate and accused Pink Floyd of being anti-American.
- Apparently during this part of the song, some of the original words were censored by the band or its management before the final mix was recorded for release. Consequently we do not hear the words used to describe Whitehouse in detail - just a few "grunts" and the words previously mentioned.
- Halfway through the song, David uses a Heil talk-box on the guitar solo and Roger uses a vocoder to mimic the sound of pigs. This is the first use of a talk box by Pink Floyd.
- In some cassette versions of the album in the US, this song was divided into two parts after the first verse, in order to minimize the tape's total length.
- The normal length of the song performed live is 17 minutes (sometimes 20), compared with the album length of 11:28. Live renditions followed the album version with a few notable differences: an extra guitar solo was played after the second verse, the talk-box solo was substituted for a Minimoog solo and to the coda were added a quiet Hammond-led section and a crescendo reprise of the guitar solo with aggressive (almost punk-like) drumming.
| Credits | Chronology |