Pink Floyd's 'Animals' Gets 50th Anniversary Nine-Disc Boxed Set

Pink Floyd's 1977 album Animals will return on January 22, 2027, as "Animals 50," a nine-disc deluxe boxed set from Sony Music containing a previously unreleased Roger Waters song and a full 1977 concert bootleg now upgraded for official release.

The announcement, made Thursday, confirms that the deluxe edition will hold five CDs, three LPs and a Blu-ray featuring 5.1 and Atmos mixes. Slimmed-down editions follow the same date: a two-CD set, a two-LP set and a standalone Blu-ray, each pairing the original album with a rarities disc. A digital version of the full box will also be sold.

What is actually new here?

The revelation for collectors is "Young Nicholas Jon," a previously unreleased track written by Waters. It sits on the rarities disc alongside four previously released items: a "Studio Jam," "Dogs (Early Version, Rough Mix)," "Sheep (Early Version, Rough Mix)" and "Sheep (Original Radio Edit)." That four-and-a-half-minute radio edit of "Sheep" was sent to radio stations at the time but had never been issued commercially. Sony released it to streaming platforms on Thursday as an advance taste of the set.

Pink Floyd fans have long known the band left little on the cutting room floor when it assembled the concept album, so a genuinely unreleased Waters composition counts as a significant find.

The live component is "Live From the Oakland Coliseum," a 13-track recording of the May 9, 1977 show. It captures a bootleg made by Reinhard Hohlwein, then 19 years old. Pink Floyd rarely professionally recorded concerts in the mid- and late 1970s, but this tape has reportedly been mixed and mastered close to professional standards for the official release. The set includes Animals and Wish You Were Here performed in their entirety, two Dark Side of the Moon songs — "Money" and "Us and Them" — and the final live performance of the instrumental "Careful With That Axe, Eugene." Sony took a similar path in April for Record Store Day, releasing the upgraded bootleg "Pink Floyd Live From the Los Angeles Sports Arena, April 26th, 1975" to document the Wish You Were Here tour.

Why the 2018 remix took four years

Disc one of the deluxe set is the original Animals; disc two is the 2018 remix, which did not reach the public until 2022. The delay stemmed from years of band disagreements, most famously a dispute over the liner notes.

Exclusive to the deluxe box is a 64-page hardback book with liner notes by novelist Jonathan Lethem, plus previously unpublished photographs from the original album cover shoot at Battersea Power Station in London — pigs very much on the wing.

What does this change for the catalog?

The release continues Sony's systematic excavation of the Pink Floyd archives since purchasing the band's music rights in 2024 for an estimated $400 million. Boxed sets of most of the band's beloved albums have appeared before, some famously including marbles, but this marks the label's most substantial revisit of the Animals era.

One fan-speculated track is absent: the eight-track-era version of "Pigs on the Wing" that joins Parts 1 and 2 into a single number with added sound effects. That 1977 variant, reissued this past June on Sony's greatest-hits compilation "8-Tracks," remains exclusive to that collection.

Although the band members have said they are not actively involved in current catalog upgrades following the Sony sale, both Waters and David Gilmour issued statements with the announcement.

"The mood in music was changing in '77," Gilmour said. "Punk music was hitting everything and I suspect that had a little bit of an influence on the way we were working on the Animals album. It's quite an aggressive, stripped-back album. It was moving away from the sort of soundscapes that we had on 'Wish You Were Here.' This album is more in your face and more rough and ready. And definitely the lyrics are a lot more aggressive from Roger. We had a lot of fun making it."

Edition breakdown

The formats break down as follows:

• Digital: original album, 2018 remix, rarities and the full Oakland 1977 live set
• 2 CD / 2 LP: original album plus rarities disc
• Blu-ray: original 1977 stereo mix; the 2018 remix in stereo, 5.1 and Atmos; rarities; the Oakland concert
• Deluxe box: five CDs (original album, 2018 remix, rarities, two live discs), three LPs (original album, 2018 remix, rarities) and the Blu-ray

The announcement lands at a moment when, as Sony's framing wryly notes, "so much piggish behavior" dominates the public sphere — a fitting backdrop for an album whose Orwellian pigs still read as current half a century on.