Pigs on the Wing
| "Pigs on the Wing" | |
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Promotional French single, "Pigs on the Wing" backed with an edit of "Sheep"
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| Song by Pink Floyd | |
| from the album Animals | |
| Published | Pink Floyd Music Publishers Ltd |
| Released |
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| Recorded | November 1976 |
| Genre | Folk rock |
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| Songwriter(s) | Roger Waters |
| Producer(s) | Pink Floyd |
| Animals track listing | |
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"Pigs on the Wing" is a two-part song by progressive rock band Pink Floyd from their 1977 concept album Animals, opening and closing the album. According to various interviews, it was written by Roger Waters as a declaration of love to his new wife Carolyne Christie. This song is significantly different from the other three songs on the album, "Dogs", "Pigs", and "Sheep" in that the other songs are dark, whereas this one is lighter-themed, as well as also being much shorter in duration at under a minute and a half while the others are over 10 minutes in length.
The song is divided into two parts, which are the first and last tracks of the album. Both are in stark contrast to the album's middle three misanthropic songs, and suggest that companionship can help us overcome our flaws. Waters apparently refers to himself as a "dog" in Part 2: "Now that I've found somewhere safe to bury my bone/And any fool knows, a dog needs a home/A shelter, from pigs on the wing." Another allusion is found in the line "So I don't feel alone, or the weight of the stone", which refers back to the dogs being "dragged down by the stone". Without the track on Animals, Waters thought the album "would have just been a kind of scream of rage".
According to Nick Mason, and confirmed by Waters, it is a love song directed towards Waters' new wife at the time, Carolyne. She was really the only one of Waters' friends he had ever met who could hold her own in an argument with Waters; according to Mason you had to be very good with semantics to win an argument against Waters. Waters wrote the song because that's all he had been looking for all along: someone who could stand up to him, an equal. The former piece of the song conveys a theme of despondency and isolation imposed upon the individual resulting from the societal pressures which work to separate the masses, a theme developed in the following track, "Dogs". Waters conveys a hopeful theme in the latter portion of the song, illustrating the strength and emotional safety as a result of unity among individuals, a safety Waters felt quickly upon meeting Carolyne.
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Wikipedia