Pink Floyd's Animals Returns for Its 50th With Unreleased Tracks and a 1977 Concert

Pink Floyd are marking the 50th anniversary of their album Animals with a reissue called Animals 50, due for release on January 22 through Sony, Pitchfork reported on 5 November.

The original album came out in 1977. The new edition keeps its tracklist and adds more material. It includes unreleased versions of "Sheep" and "Dogs", along with "Sheep (Original Radio Edit)", a shorter version of the song made for radio play. It also features "Young Nicholas Jon", a track by Roger Waters, the band's former bassist and main songwriter, from his solo work.

The biggest addition is a full recording of Pink Floyd's 1977 concert at the Oakland Coliseum Arena, in California. The show was filmed by Reinhard Hohlwein, who was a teenager at the time and recorded it as a bootleg, meaning an unofficial recording made without the band's permission. Hohlwein's footage now sits alongside the studio album.

Animals 50 is available as a CD, a vinyl record and a digital download. The box set goes further. It comes with a 64-page book containing liner notes, the short written essays that usually appear inside a record sleeve, by novelist Jonathan Lethem. The book also includes an interview with Hohlwein and an excerpt from a memoir by Audrey "Po" Powell, who worked at the design firm Hipgnosis and helped create the album's cover. Its pages carry unpublished photographs from the recording sessions, the cover shoot at Battersea Power Station in London, and the tour that followed the record.

A box set listing on the Revolver magazine online shop also names three extra studio items: "Sheep – Early Version, Rough Mix", "Dogs – Early Version, Rough Mix" and a track called "Studio Jam".

Pink Floyd have been revisiting their back catalogue in recent years. A 2025 box set for Wish You Were Here added a new Atmos mix, a surround-sound version designed for listening through multiple speakers, along with studio outtakes and a 1975 concert bootleg. Animals 50 follows that pattern of pairing an album with live and unreleased material.

For anyone who has only heard the original record, the new edition offers a second way in. The studio tracks remain the core, but the Oakland show and the early mixes let listeners hear how the songs took shape on stage and in the studio.