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From West End girls to teenage runaways – three decades of euphoric, bruised pop
here’s a pleasingly defiant comment by Neil Tennant towards the end of his handpicked selection of Pet Shop Boys lyrics. His footnote to the 2011 song “Your Early Stuff” reads: “Sometimes people just want to suggest that you’re finished, like the driver who said to me in 2006, ‘I suppose you’re more or less retired now?’, to which I was able to respond, ‘You’re driving me to Top of the Pops!’” It’s true his band still has a large following (including myself). It’s also true they are not getting any younger. (Nor am I alas.) Bifocals be damned though: what a pleasure it is to drift through more than three decades of droll vignettes, metropolitan tristesse and bittersweet generational chronicles.
Before he met his band partner Chris Lowe, Tennant had worked for the UK branch of Marvel comics, where he anglicised spellings and made judgment calls on whether certain drawings of females were too risque for the British. Later, in the early 1980s, he was an editor at Smash Hits. His lyrics are precise, almost fastidious in their use of language, with a hint of the clipped archness of Noël Coward (Tennant co-compiled an album of cover versions of his songs in 1998). The odd “baby” aside, there are few Americanisms; instead, the verses are plummy with words such as “touche”, “furthermore”, “fin de siecle”, “impudent”, “impasse” and “bibliophile”.
“Bibliophile” might describe Tennant himself. The song “Being Boring” was named after a line in Zelda Fitzgerald’s article Eulogy on the Flapper; “Can You Forgive Her?” after an Anthony Trollope novel. “Love Is a Bourgeois Contract” is inspired by David Lodge’s Nice Work. One lyric mentions Waiting for Godot. Another borrows lines from a poem by Anna Akhmatova, one of many Russian cultural and political figures Tennant discusses.
He was over 30 when the band had their first hit. At the time, he was asked how he felt about “West End Girls” reaching No 1. “What it feels like is vaguely nothing,” he replied. “It feels like having a cup of tea.” Throughout their career Pet Shop Boys have never lost their love of pop – its escapism, intensity, collective joy – nor their embarrassment at how it’s sold short by hucksters, hairy rockers and fame-at-all-cost chancers (“Shameless” contains the rather heavy-handed lines: “We have no integrity, we’re ready to crawl / To obtain celebrity we’ll do anything with anyone”).
London – its promises, its possibilities – also emerges as one of Tennant’s muses. He has never stopped identifying with the teenage runaways, art school upstarts and foreigners who head there, as he did, to begin anew. “London” is about two Russian guys who arrive “Looking for hard work / Or credit card fraud”, while “The View from Your Balcony” captures the capital’s skyline seen from a council flat in Bermondsey.
The single “A Red Letter Day” from 1996 featured a “Trouser enthusiasts autoerotic decapitation mix”, while DJ promos of “Before” sported close-ups of flaccid penises. But Pet Shop Boys have never been especially carnal. A teen magazine once described them as “the obsessive spinsters of pop”, while Lowe commented on their cover version of Village People’s “Go West”: “It’s a song about an idealistic, gay utopia. And I knew that the way Neil would sing it would make it sound hopeless; you’ve got these inspiring lyrics but it sounds like it’s never going to happen.” Still, Tennant does include the cheeky song “The Night I Fell in Love” (about a student who goes backstage at a gig and makes out with a rapper) as well as the delightfully named “The Trucker and His Mate”.
“Every lyric-writer has a guilty secret,” Tennant writes. “The sound of the words is sometimes more important than the sense of them.” It’s impossible to tell from these pages that “West End Girls” features a rap, or that “The Pop Kids” is partly spoken word. The lyrics are great, but can they be separated from the duo’s costumes, postures, record sleeves?
Pet Shop Boys have always been mirror ball magicians. Their songs are euphoric and bruised. If most dance songs are about the intense present or the heady future, Tennant and Lowe’s talent has been to flood theirs with references to yesterdays, to looking back, to tearful goodbyes. For all that, here’s hoping this book is not their final chapter.
From The Guardian: order from the Guardian or from Amazon
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- Pet Shop Boys - Left To My Own Devices - UK - 7" vinyl - £8.00, $10.32, €9.52 (New Item) (arrived 23-Jul-2024 15:48)on July 26, 2024 at 7:19 pm
PET SHOP BOYS Left To My Own Devices (1988 UK solid centre 7" vinyl single, also including The Sound Of The Atom Splitting, issued in an excellent black and white picture sleeve. The sleeve has just minimal evidence of shelfwearl, the vinyl remains in Excellent condition R6198)
- Pet Shop Boys - Left To My Own Devices - German - 7" vinyl - £12.00, $15.48, €14.28 (New Item) (arrived 29-May-2024 12:45)on July 26, 2024 at 7:19 pm
PET SHOP BOYS Left To My Own Devices (1988 German/EU wide centre 7" vinyl single, also including The Sound Of The Atom Splitting, housed in a black & white picture sleeve. The cover displays some light general wear and the vinyl has light signs of play)
- Pet Shop Boys - Nonetheless - Dolby Atmos Pure Audio Blu-ray Disc - Sealed - UK - Blu Ray Audio - £24.99, $32.24, €29.74 (New Item) (arrived 23-Apr-2024 11:45)on July 26, 2024 at 7:19 pm
PET SHOP BOYS Nonetheless (Dolby Atmos Pure Audio Blu-ray Disc of their 2024 new album featuring ten brand new songs presented in immersive Dolby Atmos and 96/24 Hi-Res Stereo, plus the video to the lead single Loneliness directed by Alasdair McLellan. The songs are very melodic and quintessentially Pet Shop Boys with a fresh, open sound, bringing together classic strands of PSB song-writing and moving them in new directions. Picture sleeve, factory sealed)
- Pet Shop Boys - It's Alright - UK - 7" vinyl - £6.99, $9.02, €8.32 (New Item) (arrived 27-Apr-2024 16:43)on July 26, 2024 at 7:19 pm
PET SHOP BOYS It's Alright (1989 UK 3-track 7" vinyl single featuring the Extended Version, One Of The Crowd and Your Funny Uncle, great picture sleeve of Chris in optician's goggles R6220)
- Pet Shop Boys - It's A Sin - Japanese - 12" vinyl - £30.00, $38.70, €35.70 (New Item) (arrived 16-May-2024 17:51)on July 26, 2024 at 7:19 pm
PET SHOP BOYS It's A Sin (1987 Japanese issue 3-track 12" vinyl single featuring the 7" Version and Disco Mix plus You Know Where You Went Wrong, picture sleeve with lyrics & thin obi strip. The sleeve displays some general wear whilst the vinyl is Excellent with just a fewlight signs of play S12-167)
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