Tag Archives: ones

#1037: Pink Floyd – Pigs (Three Different Ones)

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Ah, Animals. I’ll tell you now, my favourite Pink Floyd album. I can remember the day I downloaded it and heard the whole thing for the first time. It was Halloween 2010, and the 1990 Roald Dahl Witches film was on the TV. Channel 5, to be exact. I was 15 years old. At the time ‘Pigs on the Wing Part One’ passed me by too quickly, and I don’t think I had devloped the bandwidth to pay attention to the almost-18 minute song of ‘Dogs’ just yet. The first track on the album that caught my ear immediately though was today’s entry. At 11-and-a-half minutes in length, ‘Pigs (Three Different Ones)’ was just about in my comfort zone, and was the track that would pop into my head as I would be on the bus ride home from school.

Man, where do I even start? Animals‘s pissed off tone has already been established in the 20 or so minutes that come before ‘Three Different Ones’ starts. This track only further emphasises it. The three verses on here represent a different ‘pig’, with the first covering a general businessman, the second is widely agreed to be about former Prime Minster Margaret Thatcher, and the third explicitly calls out conservative activist Mary Whitehouse, who would dedicate a lot of her time campaigning against anything liberal. The verse isn’t about the White House in Washington D.C., as many thought for a while. Roger Waters chastises them all with the memorable, highly quotable refrain, “Ha-ha, charade you are”. You might ask, “If there are only three verses, why’s it 11 minutes long?” Well, in between the second and third verse comes a lengthy instrumental break that builds and builds, featuring heavy use of a talk box to mimic the sound of pigs during a guitar solo.

This song is fantastic. The groove that drags it along is undeniable. The use of every instrument present here is essential to the music, even down to the damn cowbell that appears in the mix between the verses. David Gilmour’s bass guitar performance is killer. Taking over from Roger Waters, who takes the rhythm guitar role here, Gilmour pulls off some melodic licks and scales that makes the track rip even harder than it does. Animals is noted for being the album in which Roger Waters’s grip on the band’s direction really began to take hold. It’s also the Pink Floyd album where I think he really came into his own as a vocalist. He’s not known for being the greatest singer ever. He’s probably the third best singer in the ‘classic’ line-up of the band. But even I try to copy the tone he gets on those ‘really a cryyy-hyyYYYYYyyy’s and the ‘charade you are’s every time I hear this one. A vocal take driven by seething resentment, for sure. Always a welcome time when this song pops up on shuffle.

#992: Arctic Monkeys – Only Ones Who Know

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I can recall really not caring for this track at all upon first listen in 2007. I was 12, all pepped up/full of energy, and I didn’t have time for slow songs. But as the years have passed and the hands of time have gripped on my shoulders, ‘Only Ones Who Know’ has slowly revealed itself to become one of my favourites from Favourite Worst Nightmare. Sometimes you need the slower songs just to release the tension. To wallow in and absorb the moments. And ‘Only Ones…’ does both those things, arriving right in the middle of the record as the sort of soothing interlude to close out the album’s first half.

The two main instruments utilised throughout are Alex Turner and Jamie Cook’s reverb-drenched guitars, one being the rhythm that provides the song’s chord progression and the other providing an almost weeping, violin-like tone to accentuate the intro’s melody. Turner comes in with the vocal eventually, crooning about a couple who, somehow, against all odds, seem to have really got it down and are perfect for one another. At least from what he sees anyway. They appear to have the inside jokes and small subtle ticks that only they can relate to, the sentiment of which I believe lends the track its title. Other people just won’t understand.

Fair to say, Alex Turners whole M.O. was writing observational tracks about couples and people in love and out of it in those times that people may consider to be the best years of Arctic Monkeys. Is it possible that he didn’t get more sincere and emotionally earnest than in this song? I think so. Show me another one of theirs. It’s good to discuss. To me, some of Arctic Monkeys earlier stuff I can’t listen to in the same way. They remind me of being way younger and the whole indie rock music scene of those times. But it’s tunes like this one that showed why they were considered to be head-and-shoulders above the rest during that period.