On to the top 10 next... Will have a little break, feel free to make your predictions (not that you'll win anything :lol:)

Love 'Devices'. I have a t-shirt with the text 'Che Guevara and Debussy to a disco beat'

Edited November 30, 201014 yr by SKOB

Go West is iconic for to be very camp

That's true. But that's why it's not one of my favourites, I think it's quite misleading about the group.

 

Love 'Devices'. I have a t-shirt with the text 'Che Guevara and Debussy to a disco beat'

 

Oh I want one :wub:

Shocked to see those two miss the top ten! I guess it's testament to just how strong their material really is though.

And in at #10 is...

 

10. Suburbia

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/7/74/PSB_Suburbia.jpg/220px-PSB_Suburbia.jpg

Score: 8.4/10. Highest vote: 11 (SKOB). Lowest vote: 5 (M!key)

 

 

"The Boys have described this song as an "epic of mad dogs and hooligans" that was inspired by a film of the same name by Penelope Spheeris about aimless, disillusioned young toughs running rampant in the suburbs of Los Angeles. Very much the urbanites, Tennant and Lowe use this track as an opportunity to express what they consider to be "the full horror" (as the subtitle of one of the remixes puts it) of suburban life, where nastiness and evil lurks just beneath a superficially attractive surface.

 

The dogs mentioned in the lyrics and whose barking frames the track probably symbolize the underlying beastialism of humanity. (One site visitor has pointed out that wild dogs inhabiting the L.A. suburbs play a significant role in the Spheeris film. The opening scene, for instance, depicts a dog mauling a baby. This probably gave Chris and Neil the idea in the first place to use dogs so prominently in the song.)

 

"Suburbia" proved a very successful single in Britain, though considerably less so in the States. Chris has noted, by the way, that the bassline for this track is "virtually the same" as that of Madonna's "Into the Groove.""

 

Definitely one of the group's classics, slightly too low I feel, but there's obviously a lot of competition! I didn't like the video, but then again, I'm afraid of dogs :lol: Another of their more ambtious early songs, though I never noticed they nicked Madonna's bassline until now :o And what were you thinking with that 5, M!key :wacko:

M!key gave 5?! :o

 

This is the definition of perfect pop song in my books.. I've loved this since the day I heard it and always will.. Better than and at least as epic as It's a Sin

9. Heart

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/7/70/HeartPetShopBoys.jpg/220px-HeartPetShopBoys.jpg

Score: 8.5/10. Highest vote: 9 (Silver Rocket, AH Gold, SKOB, Tonyttt31, Dandy*, M!key, gooddelta). Lowest vote: 6 (Ghosthunter)

 

 

"Neil and Chris were aiming for a seventies-style "mega-disco sound" with this track (dig those syndrums!), and many would say they succeeded admirably. Although they had originally considered offering it to British dance diva Hazel Dean, they changed their minds and instead developed it with Madonna in mind. But they decided against submitting it to her as well. (They themselves have suggested that they lacked the nerve to do so.) One can definitely imagine Madonna doing this; it's very much in her late '80s style, which itself often harkened back to the heyday of disco. Neil has also reportedly cited Phyllis Nelson's "I Like You"—a 1985 Shep Pettibone production that hit #1 hit on the U.S. dance charts—as an influence, although the strongest overt connection would seem to be the earlier track's prominent use of syndrums during its instrumental break.

 

Thematically, "Heart" is simply a confession, "quite sweet and sincere" according to Neil, of how deeply in love the narrator is—his "heart starts missing a beat" every time he sees the object of his affections. Neil has also described it as "a very warm song," and Chris has noted that it's "not ironic at all."

 

To promote the single (the fourth and final one released from Actually), the Pet Shop Boys starred in what is perhaps their most cinematic short-form video, featuring Ian McKellen as a rather creepy vampire closely modeled on Dracula. The plot of the video is very loosely based on the 1926 silent film classic Nosferatu, itself based on Dracula. Neil appears as a wealthy groom arriving at his castle with his new bride—who, contrary to rumor and occasional report, is not portrayed by the eighties hit singer Tiffany, though the resemblence is striking; the actress's name is Daniella Coli. Chris functions as Neil's chauffeur/valet, playing a rather ambiguous role in the plot. The vampire seduces Neil's young bride and absconds with her, leaving Neil, as he has put it, "bitter and twisted"—an excellent example of that genre of elaborate videos that have only a tenuous connection to the song itself."

 

Another song that was universally popular with the voters, although it didn't appear to be anyone's favourite, pretty impressive run of 9's though! I think it's one of their best 80s songs personally, and one of the first to have a truly epic (in the old fashioned sense) video.

Embedding's disabled on the videos, so I went to watch Suburbia on Youtube and there's a video for Pedigree dog treats before the video! :lol: Nicely done!

8. Rent

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/ca/RentPetShopBoys.jpg/220px-RentPetShopBoys.jpg

Score: 8.7/10. Highest vote: 10 (SKOB, Tonyttt31, Dandy*). Lowest vote: 7 (AH Gold, Ghosthunter)

 

 

"Undoubtedly one of the most controversial songs ever written by the Boys. Commonly viewed as a narrative by a "rent boy" (British slang for a male prostitute), Neil has directly denied this interpretation, stating that he wrote the lyrics from a female viewpoint. (Indeed, Liza Minnelli later covered this song on her Results album.) Then again, in his essay "Queen Theory: Notes on the Pet Shop Boys" (published in the 2002 critical anthology Rock Over the Edge), British scholar and critic Ian Balfour claims that an early, unreleased version contained such pointed allusions to Elton John's alleged and refuted dealings with rent boys that our heroes felt the need to rewrite the lyrics to avoid legal difficulties. (Good thing, too—Elton won his libel case against one of the tabloids that relentlessly hawked such rumors.) And in an April 2007 interview on the British TV program Hardtalk Extra, Neil conceded that he and Chris quite enjoyed being "provocative" with the title, which, as he put it, "obviously came from the phrase 'rent boy.'" So the ambiguity was consciously "built in" from the very start.

 

Whatever the case, the lyrics focus on the narrator's mixed feelings about being "kept" by the person with whom s/he is in love. Alternatingly mercenary and tender, the song invites the listener to share these mixed feelings, blurring the moral lines between sexual and financial arrangements. Released as the third single from Actually and a major hit in Britain and elsewhere, "Rent" wasn't even offered as a single in the U.S., probably because the Boys and/or their record company realized how misunderstood it would be."

 

Another true classic from the boys in my opinion, I'm rather surprised to see it so far down the top 10. For me it's quintessential Pet Shop Boys, again not one of my very faves, but it says more about PSB as an entity than West End Girls or Go West ever could...

Embedding's disabled on the videos, so I went to watch Suburbia on Youtube and there's a video for Pedigree dog treats before the video! :lol: Nicely done!

 

Nice :lol: I don't think I would want a dog on my bed though, that would be "the full horror" :lol:

 

Actually I remember now that I had a primitive karaoke programme for the BBC Micro computer i had when I was young, and it had Rent as a song on it... so I guess that was actually the first time i heard them :o

Nice :lol: I don't think I would want a dog on my bed though, that would be "the full horror" :lol:

 

Actually I remember now that I had a primitive karaoke programme for the BBC Micro computer i had when I was young, and it had Rent as a song on it... so I guess that was actually the first time i heard them :o

 

I can't really empathise with that as I love dogs and miss mine loads living so far away from her! Although that dirty dog would be a bit extreme :lol: The video is quite disturbing though I agree, some of the shots and effects used.

 

7. Can You Forgive Her?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/49/CanYouForgiveHerPSB.jpg/220px-CanYouForgiveHerPSB.jpg

Score: 8.8/10. Highest vote: 10 (Dandy*, Tom Kay, gooddelta). Lowest vote: 7 (AH Gold, Ghosthunter)

 

 

"Set to one of the Boys' most over-the-top arrangements since "It's a Sin," Tennant tells the poignant, almost comically pathetic story of a young man who refuses to accept his own gayness. He's persistently tormented by his girlfriend, who's aware of his insecurities and uses them against him to get him to behave according to her wishes. Neil insists that it's not autobiographical—thankfully, since he manages to evoke an almost palpable sense of self-loathing in the central character.

 

As he has done on more than one occasion (see "Up Against It"), Neil borrowed the song's title, but not its subject matter, from a literary work, in this case a Victorian novel by Anthony Trollope. Chris wrote the music in 6/8 time. As Neil puts it, this time-signature, which is unusual for them, "makes it sound sneaky.""

 

Now this was for sure the second best single from Very, more on that soon (?) and again, there's not a lot you can say about it, apart from the fact that it's quintessentially Pet Shop Boys. While the videos and outfits of the era bordered on self-parody, the music was brilliantly contemporary and it deservedly made them one of the most successful acts of the era.

Big shock coming up at #6...

6. West End Girls

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/8a/WestEndGirls-PSB21985.jpg

Score: 8.8/10. Highest vote: 11 (M!key). Lowest vote: 4 (Tonyttt31)

 

 

"The Pet Shop Boys' first (and biggest) true hit single is famous for its unforgettable bass-synthesizer hook, its ambisexual lyrics (not only the "East End boys and West End girls" reference but also the line "Which would you choose: a hard or soft option?"), and its "Brit-rap" innovation. The lyrics are at times cryptic and full of relatively obscure references that betray a variety of far-flung inspirations. Neil has stated that he wrote the lyrics as a stream of consciousness with different narrative voices, influenced in this respect by T.S. Eliot's great poem The Waste Land. He has also cited the influence of the early (1982) rap hit "The Message" by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. Not only is there a stylistic influence—"The Message" seminally influenced all rap and "rappish" tracks that followed—but a lyrical one as well, with both tracks graphically depicting urban decay, particularly in their respective first verses. And the ominously suicidal opening lines—

 

Sometimes you're better off dead

There's a gun in your hand and it's pointing at your head

 

—were inspired by an old James Cagney gangster film that he watched at his cousin's home one evening in the early 1980s.

 

Certain lines in "West End Girls" seem to reflect an aimlessness and lack of identity ("We've got no future, we've got no past") commonly felt by members of the Boys' generation in the 1980s. That decade's rampant acquisitiveness ("How much have you got?") is touched upon. Neil also plays around with opposites, such as rich and poor, upper class and lower class, London's East End and West End (with the West End characterized as a "dead-end world"). Certain lines ("Have you got it? Do you get it?" among others) also seem to refer to the growth of street drug culture in Thatcherite Britain.

 

Meanwhile, Neil's well-known interest and background in history (his major in college), particularly that of Russia, is evident in the line "from Lake Geneva to the Finland Station," which refers to the train route taken by Lenin when he was smuggled by the Germans to Russia during the First World War, a pivotal event in the Russian Revolution. Some of the lengthier mixes include additional Russian references, such as the bizarrely comic "Who do you think you are—Joe Stalin?" (Speaking of mixes, "West End Girls" has the distinction of being the PSB song with the greatest number of "official" remixes: at least twenty, maybe more.) What all of these references have to do with the song's primary scenario of social and sexual conflict in London is, however, anybody's guess. Perhaps they're simply meant to evoke images of revolution.

 

At any rate, "West End Girls" was first recorded with American producer "Bobby O" Orlando and, in that version, became a minor hit in some countries (most successfully in Belgium). It was subsequently re-recorded and released after the Boys moved to EMI, and this second version proved a huge international success, hitting #1 in many nations, including the U.S. and Britain."

 

:o Well well well, as Duffy might say. The two most regularly played "signature" songs of the group fail miserably in our chart, Go West having missed the top 10, and this missing the top 5. I'm wondering if Tonyttt31 has something to do with this? :kink: Seriously, it got a fairly good vote from everyone else, though was more struggling for 11s than I thought it might be. Maybe it's proof that the great British public knows them less than they think they do?

Top 5 up soon... I'm off to make a cup of tea :)

#6 West End Girls :o should be #1, its my all time favourite single of theirs after What Have I Done To Deserve This.

 

I bet ALways On My Mind is #1

5. I Wouldn't Normally Do This Kind Of Thing

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/df/I_wouldn't_normally_do_this_kind_of_thing.jpg

Score: 8.9/10. Highest vote: 11 (Silver Rocket, TomKay). Lowest vote: 6 (Tonyttt31)

 

 

"A short, simple, yet highly melodic piano-driven song that celebrates the exhilaration one feels at falling deeply in love, maybe for the first time. It's also superbly structured with its parallel verses, each prompting the listener to ask a question, which the narrator is then pleased to answer. Succinct, with not a moment wasted, the original Very album version is an absolute gem.

 

Actually, the song's genesis has nothing to do with being in love. Neil was embarking on a day trip from London to Edinburgh, and on his way via taxi to Heathrow Airport he thought to himself, "I wouldn't normally do this kind of thing"—that is, fly from one place to another and back in a single day. He couldn't get the phrase out of his head, and it soon evolved into a song. He and Chris created the demo for it in the studio the very next day.

 

Some early critics commented on the song's almost Beatlesque quality, which may have inspired what subsequently happened to it for the single version and its video. Remixed and extended by the Beatmasters, the instrumentation is fleshed out significantly, nearly becoming "busy" in the process. Prominent in the mix, especially toward the end, are backwards percussion effects, droning Indian tamburas, and a piccolo trumpet, all strongly reminiscent of circa-1967 Beatles (think "Penny Lane"). In some mixes it even has a "false ending"—a trick of which the Beatles were fond (as in "Hello, Goodbye" and "Strawberry Fields Forever," among others), in which the song seems to end but then unexpectedly resumes for another go-round."

 

YES :wub: I'm so glad this song is in the top 5. Definitely in my top 3 favourites, and it was the first song of theirs I fell in love with, with it's OTT production, camp video and influences of 60s music that I grew up listening to (my parents are old, OK? :lol:) Definitely the best single from Very, and fully deserving of this high position, I think!

#6 West End Girls :o should be #1, its my all time favourite single of theirs after What Have I Done To Deserve This.

 

I bet ALways On My Mind is #1

 

It's amongst my favourites, I'm surprised it's so low really...

 

Time will tell :kink:

4. Being Boring

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a0/Being_Boring.jpg/220px-Being_Boring.jpg

Score: 9/10. Highest vote: 11 (SKOB). Lowest vote: 6 (Tonyttt31)

 

 

"This song was inspired by a quote by Zelda Fitzgerald, the wife of American author F. Scott Fitzgerald ("… someone's wife, a famous writer in the 1920s…"): "… she refused to be bored chiefly because she wasn't boring. She was conscious that the things she did were the things she had always wanted to do." The fact that Neil found this quote so inspiring is very revealing. He uses it as the springboard for a heartfelt rumination on the path his life has taken, rendered bittersweet by his success and fame amidst the personal and social devastation wrought by AIDS. Neil has stated that this song was inspired, in particular, by the AIDS-related death of his longtime friend Chris Dowell, whose funeral had also inspired "Your Funny Uncle."

 

The Pet Shop Boys have cited this melancholy but gorgeous track as one of their finest achievements and personal favorites. It has proven a perennial fan-favorite as well. Not only are the melody and arrangement beautiful, but Neil writes one of his most moving lyrics, including the marvelous line, "I never dreamt that I would get to be the creature that I always meant to be." (Note again the Zelda Fitzgerald influence.) In a slightly truncated version, this song served as the second single released from the album. Its accompanying video, shot by Bruce Weber, was notorious for its brief glimpses of male rear nudity. But now, like the song itself, it's recognized by many as a true classic of the genre."

 

I'm a little surprised how high this one is actually... It's good and the video is one of their more arty, but again I like the lyrics much better than the music... Still, classic Pet Shop Boys!