Dogs (Pink Floyd Song) - Musical Composition

Musical Composition

The song was written in 1974 by David Gilmour and Roger Waters with the title "You've Got to Be Crazy". Waters modified the lyrics in some parts, changed the key, and retitled it "Dogs". The version on Animals is more than 17 minutes long.

The main theme features what were, for Pink Floyd, rather unusual chords. In the final version's key of D minor, the chords are D minor ninth, E♭maj7sus2/Bb, A sus2sus4, and A♭sus2(♯11). All these chords contain the tonic of the song, D.

The song fades in with an acoustic guitar, in D tuning, strumming the chords with a lively, syncopated rhythm, with a droning synthesizer playing chord tones (A, B♭, A, and A♭, respectively). After the first sixteen-bar progression, Gilmour begins the vocal. For the third repetition, bass guitar, drums and lead guitar (playing a subtle drone of D) enter. After this repetition comes the first of several guitar solos, played on a Fender Telecaster, as opposed to Gilmour's usual Stratocaster. Next is another verse of lyrics, followed by a keyboard-dominated instrumental verse. Finally, after six repetitions of the main theme, the tempo is cut in half, dramatically slower, a new chord progression is introduced, resolving gradually to the relative major, F, with two lead guitars loudly playing a slow harmonized melody, and a quieter third guitar adding decorative string bends, with heavy use of reverb and echoes.

The song is then stripped back down to acoustic guitar, droning on the Dm9 chord, with the bass softly striking E, the ninth of the chord, in the same range as the guitar's lowest note, D. Another slash chord movement follows, B♭ to C/B♭, followed by the key's dominant, A Major, with the minor sixth heard first at the top of the chord, in an A(add♭6), and later, as its bass note (in a progression of A, A/F, A/E, to D minor). After another guitar solo over the new progression, Gilmour sings a melismatic vocal with overdubbed harmonies, ending with the lyric "Have a good drown/As you go down/All alone/Dragged down by the stone", as the dissonant A/F leads back to Dm9.

The middle section, in a slow, metronomic 6/4 time, is built upon several layers of synthesizers, sustaining the four chords of the main theme, with the sound of dogs barking processed through a Vocoder and played as an instrument. Gilmour's last word, "stone", echoes slowly for many measures, gradually becoming distorted and losing its human character, before fading out completely (It reappears later on the album, in the instrumental section of "Sheep"). There are no guitars in this section. Gradually, a synthesizer solo emerges, and as it reaches its climax, the acoustic guitar returns, at the original tempo, once again lively and syncopated.

The formula of the first section is followed, but this time, with Waters singing the lead. A third guitar solo ends in three-part harmony, playing descending augmented triads, leading to Gilmour's slow, harmonized guitar melody in F Major, in a section of music indistinguishable from its first appearance in the song. This leads to the final verse, with Waters singing a new, repeating melody for the sixteen lines beginning "Who was ...". Originally sung over the tonic only, in the final recording the multiple harmonized guitars alternate between D minor and C Major, while the bass further extends the harmony with a descending F, E, D, and C, creating the sense of an F sixth chord followed by C/E. Originally, Waters' lyrics ("Who was born in a house full of pain," etc.) were echoed by Gilmour and Richard Wright in a round style, but in the final recording, only the last few are repeated, and done so by Waters himself, using tape delay. This section resolves first to B♭, then to A, before concluding with the A, F, E bass movement to a sustained Dm9, as the lyrics again end with "dragged down by the stone".

"Dogs" is the only song on Animals in which Gilmour sings a lead part.