Go ahead! I will be here for an hour now at least but dunno about others

Edited November 30, 201014 yr by SKOB

17. So Hard

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c4/Pet_Shop_Boys_-_So_hard.jpg

Score: 7.6/10. Highest vote: 10 (Silver Rocket, Dandy*). Lowest vote: 5 (M!key)

 

"This funny-sad song about a couple's mutual infidelities and resulting distrust of each other was the first single from Behaviour and, in fact, came out in advance of the album (which is the Boys' general habit with their albums' first singles). You can't help but feel that the two characters described in the lyrics deserve each other. Best line: "We've both given up smoking 'cause it's fatal—so whose matches are those?"

 

Neil has confirmed in print the accuracy of the longstanding rumor that this track contains a brief sample lifted from a porno movie. Indeed, in many mixes (including the album and single versions, although you have to listen closely) you can at times hear what sounds like a man—though Neil stated it was a woman—essentially moaning the title. Largely because of this fact, the title is sometimes cited as a double-entendre, which the Boys have also acknowledged."

 

Again not a personal favourite, I find it a little boring, though I like the porn movie story :kink: Definitely a song that divides opinion...

16. Yesterday, When I Was Mad

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4b/YesterdayWhenIWasMadPetShopBoyssingle.jpg/220px-YesterdayWhenIWasMadPetShopBoyssingle.jpg

Score: 7.8/10. Highest vote: 11 (AH Gold). Lowest vote: 5 (Tonyttt31)

 

"During and after their "Performance" tour, Neil and Chris were sometimes more than a little upset by the critical reaction to their elaborate stage show, including comments by personal acquaintances. The lyrics of this song consist of a virtual catalogue of bitchy statements, ranging from faint praise and backhanded compliments ("You have a certain quality which really is unique") to downright cruelty ("You've both made such a little go a very long way"). We can only hope that they got most of their anger out of their system with this bit of retaliation.

 

More than one commentator have suggested the stylistic influence of the British band Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine on this track. The Boys themselves, however, have said that its shifting time-signatures betray the influence of progressive rock—a surprising revelation, to say the least."

 

EASILY my least favourite single from Very, the lyrics are good, but again I find something unlikable about the music... deserves it's place IMHO.

15. Love Comes Quickly

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/3/32/PSB_Love_Comes_Quickly.jpg/220px-PSB_Love_Comes_Quickly.jpg

Score: 7.9/10. Highest vote: 10 (Tonyttt31). Lowest vote: 6 (Ghosthunter, Dandy*)

 

""Sooner or later, this happens to everyone." A surprisingly direct song, "Love Comes Quickly" describes how love can come suddenly and unexpectedly—no matter who you are, no matter what you try to do to avoid it—throwing you for the proverbial loop. "You can't stop falling." It happens to the rich, the powerful, the well-educated, the well-traveled, the sophisticated. Even a "taste [for] forbidden pleasures" doesn't render you immune. Neil and Chris suggest, in fact, that it is in the very nature of love to strike "when you least expect it."

 

Of course, it's just like the Pet Shop Boys to take something that, in hands more prone to cliché, would be simply wonderful and cast it in such ominous terms. It is this strange sense of foreboding—love as a scary, disturbing thing—that makes this song exceptional, if not unique. Producer Stephen Hague contributed to the middle portion ("I know it sounds ridiculous…"); hence his co-writing credit."

 

To quote Chris, "I don't like much really, do I? But what I like, I love passionately". This is one of those, although I probably should have given it more than 8 on reflection. A beautifully arranged, and somewhat simple love song, which came out in the very early days of the group's career and slightly flopped. It deserved at least 3 weeks at #1 in my opinion. And have you heard the Japanese version :)

Love Comes Quickly :wub:

 

All three are brilliant though.. So Hard has grown recently

25. Was It Worth It? - I do like this a lot, I don't think last place is deserved but it is pretty much Pet Shop Boys by numbers.

24. Absolutely Fabulous - Meh... great TV show though.

23. DJ Culture - This only grew on me about a year ago, it's different for them and I love it.

22. It's Alright - Never has there been a more apt title for a song, average.

21. Where The Streets Have No Name/Can't Take My Eyes Off You - I like this a lot for what it is, not their finest moment but enjoyable and a fun slice of camptastic pop.

20. How Can You Expect To Be Taken Seriously? - Not bad.

19. Liberation - This was another late grower for me but I adore it :wub: It really touches me.

18. Jealousy - Again, another late grower but it's a nice downtempo track of theirs, lyrically good.

17. So Hard - This was always one of my favourites of theirs, total genius and deserved higher!

16. Yesterday, When I Was Mad - This is good, I usually overlook it but it's a sterling piece of work.

15. Love Comes Quickly - Beautiful, deserves higher.

I find something unlikable about the music... deserves it's place IMHO.

 

This. The whole Very era is musically a bit weird. I'm not 100 % comfortable with it :D

14. Domino Dancing

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b7/Dominodancing.jpg/220px-Dominodancing.jpg

Score: 8/10. Highest vote: 10 (M!key). Lowest vote: 5 (Ghosthunter)

 

"Neil says that the title of this song was inspired during a stay on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia. "In the evening there was nothing to do except play dominoes; this friend of ours [their personal assistant and Chris's roommate, the late Pete Andreas] always used to beat us, and he used to do this celebratory dance." Despite this prosaic origin, "domino dancing" became Neil's metaphor for a love relationship breaking down because of jealousy. But it has also been widely interpreted as a metaphor for what was going on in the early days of the AIDS crisis: carefree young people dancing (a euphemism for sex; at the very least dancing is, as has been observed, "a vertical expression of a horizontal idea") and subsequently collapsing in succession from illness like rows of dominos. Lending some credence to this interpretation, Neil reportedly said of this song, shortly after its release, that it was their "Numbers," referring to a notorious 1983 track by Soft Cell that is indeed about casual sex.

 

Neil and Chris had traveled to Miami to work with Exposé producer Lewis Martineé, whose work they admired, and this track, with its strong Latino influence, was the result. It was almost certainly through Martineé that the Latin dance group The Voice in Fashion—who had worked with the producer and who signed with the Boys' label, EMI, in 1988—ended up providing the "all day, all day" backing vocals for this song."

 

This really did divide opinion. Personally it's one of my very favourites, but maybe the younger members didn't get it? The video was hot too :kink: I wonder what became of The Voice In Fashion?

This. The whole Very era is musically a bit weird. I'm not 100 % comfortable with it :D

 

Very is my favourite album :o Just not that song. The other singles are PERFECTION.

Love Comes Quickly, one of the best singles from their debut album, mind you their debut album there wasn't a bad track on it.

I love Domino Dancing, its always in the back of my head when I play the track

mmm Very sounds a bit dated to me..Of course it's a good album and it was my first PSB album but hasn't aged as well as let's say Behaviour or even Please.

Maybe it's my inner junkie of 80s pop

 

But Domino Dancing..Amazing. As is this cover version:

Edited November 30, 201014 yr by SKOB

I suppose, but I love the packaging (being brought up on Lego!) and the album still has a big, big place in my heart, though I agree that on average they were better in the 80s than the 90s. And that is a surprisingly good cover, and on reflection I wish Eläkeläiset made it to Eurovision :lol:

 

I love Domino Dancing, its always in the back of my head when I play the track

 

What is? :unsure: I love it too tho.

I suppose, but I love the packaging (being brought up on Lego!) and the album still has a big, big place in my heart, though I agree that on average they were better in the 80s than the 90s. And that is a surprisingly good cover, and on reflection I wish Eläkeläiset made it to Eurovision :lol:

Indeed. The packaging is my favourite ever!

Eläkeläiset are quite bad with their own music...Should stick on doing old songs their way

 

13. Opportunities (Let's Make Lots Of Money)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/d/db/PSB_Opportunities.jpg/220px-PSB_Opportunities.jpg

Score: 8.1/10. Highest vote: 10 (AH Gold, Tonyttt31). Lowest vote: 7 (Silver Rocket, SKOB, Ghosthunter, Dandy*)

 

"A "cynical joke song" (as Neil has described it) that many people misunderstood and forever caused them to despise the Pet Shop Boys or at least view them with intense suspicion. Much of the problem lies in many listeners' inability to distinguish between the singer of a song and the lyrical persona that he or she has adopted while singing it. But the narrator of "Opportunities" is hardly Neil himself. (For one thing, he never "doctored in mathematics.") In fact, Neil has referred to the narrator as "a pathetic character" who, in the end, isn't at all likely to make "lots of money."

 

It seems that the Boys are satirizing the mercenary attitudes that they suspect (with good reason) that many performers have in their pursuit of success as pop stars. It can also be viewed as a more general commentary on the prevailing "greed is good" mentality (not to mention outright larceny: "If you have the inclination, I've got the crime") of the Thatcherite/Reaganite era, of which the somewhat socialistically inclined Boys undoubtedly disapproved. It was a message that much of the public—particularly in the United States—didn't want to hear, enamored as they are of the great mythology that rock music is (or should be) somehow above such pecuniary concerns. Musicians who are "only in it for the money" are thus viewed as fakes and traitors. By laying bare this very sentiment, in however a satirical fashion, Tennant and Lowe alienated rock fans who didn't want to hear it and thus turned it back on them. In short, the messengers were condemned on account of the message. Fortunately, this probably didn't matter much to Neil and Chris, who have never considered themselves "rock stars" and detest the mythologizing impulses that made so many listeners turn against them in the first place."

 

Now this was liked pretty much across the board, although it tended to be liked rather than loved. Interesting quote above, I think it says a lot about the group as a whole - you either get them or you don't. I definitely do :wub: Personally I think this is a good song, but not up there with their major classics...

Opportunities did a bit better than I thought.. Definitely a good song but fails to stand out on fantastic album.

Domino Dancing should have been higher - classic!

 

Opportunities is decent, I think I rated it 8, so satisfied with that position for it here.

12. Go West

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/0a/Pet-Shop-Boys-Go-West-22506.jpg

Score: 8.1/10 (more 10s). Highest vote: 10 (AH Gold, Tonyttt31). Lowest vote: 7 (Silver Rocket, SKOB, Ghosthunter, Dandy*)

 

"Neil has said of this track, "We tried to bring out the elegiac quality of a utopia that couldn't be realized." It was Chris's idea to cover the Village People classic from 1979. Neil was reluctant at first, but he soon warmed to the idea and later conceded that, as usual, Chris's idea for a remake was right on target. With the help of an all-male authentic Broadway chorus—described by arranger Richard Niles as "very butch, very camp"—the Boys transformed the original celebration of the "Gay American Dream" of California sunshine, warmth, brotherhood, and sex into an intensely ironic yet assertive and strangely uplifting disco dirge haunted by AIDS.

 

Of course the Village People had successfully drawn upon the famous suggestion to "Go West, young man"—which, by the way, wasn't original with nineteenth-century American journalist Horace Greeley, as commonly believed, although he did popularize it. That certainly remains in the PSB rendition. But I can't help but wonder the extent to which Chris and Neil were also consciously drawing upon the ages-old cultural tradition of "going west," riding off into the sunset, being symbolic of death—an idea that surely wasn't in the minds of either Greeley or the Village People when they respectively appropriated the phrase.

 

...Neil and Chris added the new middle section ("There where the air is free…"); Neil wrote the new words and Chris the additional music. Neil modified some of the original lyrics as well. "

 

Wow :o Considering this song is often stated as the boys' calling card, I'm surprised how low down it is. For me it emphasises what's best and worst about the Pet Shop Boys, on one hand irony, on the other flippancy and the tendency to do things in an overblown way. The early unreleased mix is better than the single version too, which suggests a tendency to overthink things... Don't get me wrong, I like it a lot, but I can totally see why people wouldn't... Still, I don't think you can argue with THAT Brits perofrmance:

 

 

By the way, would people like me to post videos for the top 10/5/3?

Please post the videos!

 

Go West...I guess it's their signature hit song but doesn't really add anything to their artistry imo.

11. Left To My Own Devices

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/0c/Lefttomyowndevices.jpg

Score: 8.3/10. Highest vote: 11 (Dandy*). Lowest vote: 6 (AH Gold)

 

 

"So much is going on here that it's hard to know where to begin. For one thing, it's tempting to think that something very campy is going on in this recitation of everyday events given an epic, orchestra-on-the-dancefloor treatment. Are the Pet Shop Boys implying that everyday life is epic in and of itself? On another front, one critic has described this song as indicative of the "desperation of the gay lifestyle," or some such rot. (Well, there may be a modicum of truth to it. Gay commentator Andrew Sullivan refers to it in this song as a form of "detachment" common among gay people.) One might even combine the aforementioned concepts and suggest that Neil and Chris are providing a camped-up parody of the epic self-referentialism to which certain gay men are inclined."

 

I always think this song is much later than it actually is, there's something about it that's very Very if you know what I mean :lol: Shockingly it came out in 1988. As such I think it's an early sign of the ambition they had and their tendency towards classical music and theatricality. But here, unlike with Go West or Jealousy I think it works really well, and I was surprised to not see this one in the top 10...