“Sheep” by Pink Floyd

"Sheep" is the snarling heart of Pink Floyd's 1977 album Animals, and it had been knocking around for years under the name "Raving and Drooling", played live on the 1974 tours when the band opened its shows with new songs before running through The Dark Side of the Moon. Roger Waters wrote it and sings it, borrowing loosely from Orwell's Animal Farm: the sheep are the working class, trudging behind society's dogs and pigs without a question until they finally turn and rise up. The 1976 riots at the Notting Hill Carnival and the Troubles in Northern Ireland were on his mind.

The band plays it like a stampede. Richard Wright's Rhodes and Minimoog glisten and growl, David Gilmour handles bass as well as guitar, Nick Mason drives hard, Waters piles on vocoder and tape effects, and the middle section twists Psalm 23 into a sneer.

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