Pet Shop Boys - Tracks Poll

There's plenty of great material post-Very, I just think they're not as good at deciding which cuts should make it to the albums and what their order should be.

I had to pretty much completely rearrange Fundamental and Yes to enjoy them. I took out some songs and added b-sides and different mixes and reordered them and ended up with 2 great albums. I mean, how can you leave out "Fugitive" or "This Used To Be The Future" from the main sets?

"Minimal"! "Indefinite Leave to Remain"!

I kept those.

I don't think I will have more than two votes on my ballot from post-'Very'. It was an age/life thing, I got into completely new music then and didn't care much for Bilingual, and lost track of them completely after that (always keeping the old music close at heart, but not dipping my toe in the new albums.

But I do relish the opportunity for ilm to point me to all the gems I must have missed out on after 'Very' (apart from the hits that I know). That's what makes these polls so great.

They didn't lose their songwriting or production chops post-Very: Yookay and American culture changed. As the "eighties" (which I'll use as a synecdoche) receded and became another nostalgia piece the PSB lost their immediacy in the minds of the public. In the UK they still scored lots of top ten singles and albums coasting on their reputation. For better or worse, for reasons beyond an artist's control, the times in which the artist lives matters; it nourishes the muse. The Boys simply didn't fit the laddishness of British AND American culture.

When I reviewed Bilingual for my college paper, my editors were amused; the Boys were already seen as throwbacks -- only three years after Very received their loudest acclaim and actually got American college airplay! But the timing is interesting: 1993 is really when The Nineties began in both the UK and America. The Boys were anachronisms.

Thus, it didn't matter how good the records continued to be: "Se a Vida E," "Before," "You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You're Drunk," "New York City Boy." Their moment was gone, and after a while their inspiration wilted.

"It's not as easy as it was, or as difficult as it could be."

Also: don't overlook the silent diffusion in America of the knowledge that they were gay. And British. Being British was a bad thing in '94 and '95 unless you were Tricky and Oasis.

I got into them in the late 90s and people in the US either thought "lol80s" or "lolGAY". I remember being really surprised at their larger acceptance when I moved to the UK as well as the middle-class family audience when I saw them in Germany.

I didn't like "Numb" until England went out of the 2006 World Cup.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZByrHy7nrE

Great writing, Alfred.

And I do mostly agree, they lost 'their moment'. I have been continuously surprised that they remained such a high profile the last decade in the first place. Which is a massive accomplishment, re-inventing yourself, or rather, re-inventing your audience. Because next to the hardcore fan base they managed to attract new fans in three decades.

For me personally though, and this goes for a lot of people I know, I just took a different turn after 'Very'. I can't put my finger on it now, but the people that grew up and were young and heavily into music around 'West End Girls' got on, enjoyed the ride up until Bilingual, and got off at the next stop after that one.

It says something about their continued vitality that their last album nearly debuted at #1 in the UK and they themselves could inspire this response at Glastonbury last year:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y8JyDbwmRg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWJtWuMoeNs

all of the aforementioned CD reissue booklet interviews are here:
http://www.petshopboys.net/html/interviews/Interviews-1d.shtml

the very reason You Tube was invented is basically this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGg3e_PBLX4

still the best documentary/tv stuff i've ever seen about the boys

"and if they stop liking pop music, they'll hear a hard days's night on the radio and they'll suddenly remember the first time they fell in love or what it was like doing their O-levels or something"

Opening made me wish for a Pet Shop Boys edition of In Our Time.

Been listening to Discography and Please today and finding the sonic palette a little...samey. Good background music for getting some work done, though. Sorry PSB fans!

I was surprised to see the performance they gave recently after receiving some kind of UK music lifetime achievement award - the entire crowd, straight and gay, male and female, was enjoying and singing along to tracks that made either a minimal impact in the US or are seen as "lol80s or lolGAY", e.g. "It's a Sin". To the extent anyone knows that here, it's as a gay anthem, not just an anthem. My straight peer group knows "West End Girls" and perhaps "Opportunities" but that's about it, and even most of my gay peer group is mostly clueless about them.

My first PSB albums were Bilingual and Nightlife at age 16; I'm not sure how I would have reacted to tracks like "You Only Tell Me You Love Me" and "New York City Boy" if I had grown up with the pre-Very stuff. There is certainly a different vibe, I'd argue a less universal one. Those albums made a lot of sense to me but neither the production nor the lyrical content obviously resonates with the typical "West End Girls" fan, let alone the typical American listener.

yeah, time to drag out those Further Listening CDs that I paid so much damn money for and have barely opened since ripping them to digital.

I ripped the Further Listenings into three or four mega-albums of Twelves, B-Sides, Mixes and maybe something else. This was an A+ decision.

I'd actually forgotten how much I like this song; I should really get around to replacing this album soon

Dan if you don’t have the remasters of the first six you are doing yourself a massive disservice. (I was going to say “for the booklets alone” before pisces and someone else linked them.)

Alfred, is that dvd compilation any good? The commentary I mean? (I know the videos are)

It’s very very well done as a DVD as well – you can program your own order, or set it to random, and has extended versions of three clips – but the commentary is absolutely a delight. Neil: “Now the themes here in the song were being undercut by the imagery, I feel at this remove, but what the director, James Smythenby-Ponson, had in mind was a more elliptical representation of my lyrical allusion, as you can see by the repeated scroll in the background. The technology is dated now, perhaps, but it was very cutting edge at the time. We spent 12 days in a freezing warehouse in Barnesly for this shot here, and you can just about see the chilblains forming on the extras noses in a minute – yes, there. Now the cover photo for the single was taken in the same location, but a month later, and –- “ Chris: “Look at that hat I'm wearing, I look bloody stupid. Can we leave this one off the DVD?”

They're the best-selling duo in British history, right? Unlike their American co-beneficiaries of that honor, Hall and Oates, they're still making the top ten though. Plus, they carry 24 years of accumulated critical and popular good will. They've never been tacky or uncool.

"It's a Sin" was a UK #1 and US top 10; hardly a non-entity/non-impact.

Four other US top ten singles besides "West End Girls" actually.

There's a huge gap between having five top ten US tracks, all of which came before 1988 and only two of which are occasionally still played on the radio, and being one of the best-selling groups in British history who have never had an album not make the top ten over nearly 25 years of making music. "It's a Sin" may not have been a non-entity at the time (#9 in the US according to wiki) but it's just not a high profile track any more, at least in the world I'm in.

Pet Shop Boys are something like the 3rd best selling dance act of all time in the US. I know that doesn't mean much, and I'm right with you about today's perception (the decline of radio airplay of anything pre-1996 that isn't Nirvana or various classic rock tracks has a lot to do with this). 80s Flashback hours in the mid-to-late 90s featured West End Girls, What Have I Done To Deserve This, and Opportunities quite a bit, at least where I lived.

I still hear the five top ten hits all the time, but admittedly only in the last ten years. In the nineties I only heard "West End Girls" and "Always On My Mind."

Pet Shop Boys are something like the 3rd best selling dance act of all time in the US.

Other stats:

the most successful male artists on the U.S. dance charts
the most successful duo or group
the most successful non-Americans
the eighth most successful artist of the 1980s
the sixth most successful of the 1990s
#3 in the number of dance hits (28), exceeded only by Madonna and Janet Jackson*
#5 in the number of Number One dance hits (8), surpassed by Madonna, Janet Jackson, Donna Summer, and Whitney Houston*

Really, anyone who's stuck on the early albums should try Disco 3. First half is flawless, fantastic.

Piano London >>>>>>>>> Housecat London

Man, I love the 7"-inch version of "A Man Could Get Arrested" on the second disc of Please, originally the B-side to "West End Girls." It's the only track about which you can say it sounds EXACTLY like 1985.

This poll is impossible. I'm listening through chronologically and noting down my votes. And i'm just listing every single, and most of the album tracks and bsides. IMPOSSIBLE.

Decided that "Home and Dry" might very well be top 5 for me. Take that post-Very h8rs.

Home and Dry is fantastic.

When is the deadline on this?

A week from Sunday.

shit I'm listening to some Fundamental tracks and thinking I need to revise my ballot

Albums were never nearly as consistent post-Very as they were before, but there a lot of absolute gems on them. Fundamental is probably the best of them. Or maybe Bilingual.

So, for clarity's sake, if I was to vote the PSB version of "I'm Not Scared", would that count as separate from those who might vote for the Eighth Wonder version?

lol I had no idea someone else did "I'm Not Scared" until this thread

Oh, Dan you lucky boy, you're in for a treat

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkE-UKVEdCo

The different versions of "I'm Not Scared" will be counted seperately.

For info I had a vote for "Viva La Vida/Domino Dancing" and initially counted it as "Domino Dancing" but after listening to it for the first time I'm going to class is as a seperate work.

Their recent cover of "Viva La Vida" is their best song since 2006.

So, for clarity's sake, if I was to vote the PSB version of "I'm Not Scared", would that count as separate from those who might vote for the Eighth Wonder version?

yes, this is specifically mentioned in the first post

raise the ballots to fifty votes Billy

whoops xpost

I could easily do 50 songs but I think keeping the limit at 20 is a good idea tbh

Their recent cover of "Viva La Vida" is their best song since 2006.

It's better than Coldplay's original, I will give you that.

keep it at 20, it's a good mental exercise.

okay the demo version of "Don Juan" is so... different

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJMof6ThawI

My problem with the post-Very (I would even say post-Behaviour) era has less to do with consistency and more to do with a certain shift in the way the Boys decided to present themselves. Their sentimental side gradually became much more obvious (not necessarily in the lyrics, more in the delivery) and somehow that ruined things for me. If "It's A Sin" had been recorded circa Nightlife it would be a very different track and I would've probably hated it.

Bilingual has great b-sides:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viYi43QU2oA

My problem with the post-Very (I would even say post-Behaviour) era has less to do with consistency and more to do with a certain shift in the way the Boys decided to present themselves. Their sentimental side gradually became much more obvious (not necessarily in the lyrics, more in the delivery) and somehow that ruined things for me. If "It's A Sin" had been recorded circa Nightlife it would be a very different track and I would've probably hated it.

I don't buy this, especially considering the Actually singles besides "It's a Sin" were "What Have I Done To Deserve This?", "Rent" and "Heart" (with "Always On My Mind" released during the same era)

Their recent cover of "Viva La Vida" is their best song since 2006.

I just about prefer "Legacy", partly down to Owen P's contribution, though the paranoid lurch of the lyrics towards the end is my favourite bit. Actually the closers are easily my favourites on both the last two albums. "Viva La Vida" comfortably made it onto my ballot too though - love how much more dramatic they make the entry of the 'oh oh oh oh oh' at the end.

Man, I'd never heard "Legacy" before tonight, but the Owen P mention made me look it up and I am hooked!

what's that track playing towards the start of the soutbank show clip? the one that sounds like a Kompakt record from 2003?