Pigs (Three Different Ones)

"Pigs (Three Different Ones)"
Brazil promotional single
Promotional single by Pink Floyd from the album Animals
Published	Pink Floyd Music Publishers Ltd
Released	23 January 1977 (UK) 2 February 1977 (US)
Recorded	April – May 1976
Genre	Progressive rock, blues rock, hard rock
Length	11:28 4:05 (Promotional version)
Label	Harvest (UK) Columbia/CBS (US)
Writer(s)	Roger Waters
Producer(s)	Pink Floyd

"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. Although it was not made available for commercial purchase, promotional copies were released in Brazil, albeit in an edited form of only four minutes and five seconds in length.

The song's three verses each presents a different "pig", the identity of whom remains a matter of speculation as only the third verse clearly identifies its subject as morality campaigner Mary Whitehouse, who is described as a "house proud town mouse" who has to "keep it all on the inside." Also, Roger told Jim Ladd in 1992 on the Westwood One radio special called Pink Floyd : The 25th Anniversary Special that the "Whitehouse" verse had nothing to do with the home of the U.S. President, the White House, after Ladd told Roger he interpreted the last verse as an attack on former President Gerald Ford (who was president at the time the song was recorded) before Roger set the record straight.

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. Gilmour also plays a fretless bass guitar, with a pick, doing two short, syncopated bass solos—one before the first verse, another before the third. When the final verse ends and a guitar solo emerges, the bass line moves into a driving eighth note rhythm, sliding up and down the E minor scale in octaves, beneath the chords of E minor and C major seventh. Roger Waters, usually the band's bassist, played a rhythm guitar track on the song instead.