Revelation - Official ILX Pet Shop Boys tracks poll results

I forgot to mention at the start, if there are any ties they will be decided as follows; by number of number one votes, number of voters, which track gets the highest placing in individuals ballot, alphabetically.

Love that this thread has it's own PSB name. A good one too! The boys would approve.

48. To Face The Truth. (1990, Behaviour, 77 points, 3 votes, 0 number ones)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbdtlP0gt7w
Spotify: http://open.spotify.com/track/78GoyurUrxm4X2kG6pnp5T

47. Liberation. (1993, Very, 81 points, 4 votes, 0 number ones)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtlM1F8guPc
Spotify:http://open.spotify.com/track/2DnvlQI1kYMTBaxJpfAMz8

46. A Red Letter Day (1996, Bilingual, 83 points, 4 votes, 0 number ones)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-2TaT8dPns

Spotify: http://open.spotify.com/track/3XQTpx2DHsBE3xuXZCFJdW

RIF: Single debuted at #9 in the UK, but fell to #42 the following week, at the time the largest drop in chart history.

probably beaten every week since

LOL at their clothes in that To Face The Truth screenshot.

Liberation made my "short"list of ~70 but that's the only one so far.

I'm feeling very sheepish, incidentally - I couldn't sing a note of these so far.

You'll definitely be able to sing this one..

45. Where The Streets Have No Name (I Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You). (1991, standalone, 87 points, 4 votes, 0 number ones)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jt2j79pca7c

Spotify: http://open.spotify.com/track/2TNRmSMJzsweYzWXHi28r2

RIF: Following the release of the single, U2 issued a statement saying "What have we done to deserve this?"

I completely forgot to vote for Where The Streets Have No Name, one of the greatest cover versions of all time.

All good songs so far, I'm wondering if this maybe the first poll I like every song that places.

44. Love etc. (2009, Yes, 94 points, 5 votes, 0 number ones)

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

Spotify: http://open.spotify.com/track/58aYg1HRp6muVAWaSPLLKD

Bono has ended a simmering feud with the Pet Shop Boys over their cover version of one of U2's best-loved songs.

He was appalled after they turned the 1987 hit "Where the Streets Have No Name" into an instant camp classic by adding their own vocals and a pumping disco beat.

The Irish rockers issued a statement soon after the Pet Shop Boys version was released, declaring: "What have we done to deserve this?" But speaking about the spat for the first time this week, singer Neil Tennant insisted he had managed at long last to patch things up with Bono.

Peace was declared after a bizarre encounter at Elton John's mansion in the south of France, which ended with Bono and the English pop duo jumping into the swimming pool from a first floor balcony.

Asked about claims that Bono and Edge had been gunning for him, Tennant told music magazine Q: "I'd read things in the press.

"Anyway, we met Bono at Elton's and he was a bit funny at the beginning but he was really friendly. It all ended with a competition. He kept saying, 'It's rock versus pop.' At the end of the meal he jumped into Elton's swimming pool from the terrace and to his evident surprise I jumped in as well. So he said, 'OK. Rock one -- Pop one.' It ended as a draw -- quite rightly so."

43. Some Speculation. (1993, B-Side, 4 votes, 0 number one votes)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBmAw9eoRJU

Spotify: http://open.spotify.com/track/3SiFFfmFac2OEM51SEKQbt

I was really underwhelmed with Love etc. when it came out but it grew on me so much and I love it now. It was the exact opposite of what happened with I'm With Stupid which I can't even listen to now.

Yeah, agree with that. 'Yes' has really grown on me as an album.

42. It Must Be Obvious. (1990, B-Side, 98 points, 5 votes, 0 number one votes)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO9tJlvC9ro

Spotify: http://open.spotify.com/track/5zlTMICphPXPL9n7k585KV

Oh, only saw this thread now due to Gubke mentioning it in the nomination thread!

41. It Couldn't Happen Here. (1987, Actually, 105 points, 0 number ones)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dq72QbwOhoU

Spotify: http://open.spotify.com/track/2QqPaaNdbpgNMot5WKw9y5

RIF:The title is borrowed from Sinclair Lewis's 1935 novel 'It Can't Happen Here'.

Love etc. is a solid track. The only thing I don't like is the melody in the first verse which follows the synth motif and totally doesn't work. Strange, considering how Neil Tennant described Xenomania as somewhat obsessed with finding the best melody for a song.

First of my picks to appear!

and here's your second:

40. Miserabilism. (1992, B-side, 106 points, 6 votes, 0 number ones)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPBmzTvKsmw&feature=related

Spotify: http://open.spotify.com/track/20GBfHqwta4csdKTDVjZ9F

RIF: The song is sung from the viewpoint of cheeky chappy Morrissey.

Thought this one might be higher. I thought it would be the highest B-side to place.

39. Losing My Mind (Liza Minelli). (1989, Collaboration, 109 points, 0 number one votes)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtR_eyyrn9g Scroll to 8:45 to avoid Wogan.

Spotify: http://open.spotify.com/track/2loMPlz3JWjFGF6fPoiSoo

RIF: Minelli's biggest chart hit in the UK, #6 in August 1989.

I've a big fan of "Some Speculation" - that galumphing Patrick Cowley bassline that comes in alongside the brisk percussion (esp. around the three minute mark), married to the dreamlike menace of the synths and Neil's vocal ... they've written some fantastic songs about gossip, but unlike the bitchiness of others this captures an ambient dread. "What's your game? What's his name?"

Love etc.: Enjoyed it greatly at the time and if anything it has grown on me. The space around those soft bass thumps is massive - it's like they found a whole new layer of sound to play with, using the same old tinkly stuff at the top to the super low bass. Miserabilism has a similar sonic palette but everything feels crammed into the midrange by comparison. The "Yes" bonus disc version of this is also solid.

Some Speculation: also voted for this, not exactly the biggest dancefloor banger in the world but I love the main riff, and the lyrics are about as biting as they come.

Miserabilism: I was expecting this to be in my top 10 but it ended up not even making the ballot. Not sure what's missing - maybe the verse is a bit weak, and the backing track too one-note. Can't take anything away from the chorus though.

The full length commentary they recorded for Yes was really funny and interesting too. Definitely made me enjoy the album more.

38. My October Symphony. (1990, Behaviour, 116 points, 5 votes, 0 number ones)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-c7A500Po0

Spotify: http://open.spotify.com/track/23jXBMOpIlhh3yH4ySSBPC

Where can I find that? Didn't know it existed. (xpost)

So far, two Behaviour tracks I wasn't expecting to appear. I wonder if the "obvious" ones will show up too.

commentary on spotify here: http://open.spotify.com/track/7w9AsZpoehCjItgDZwJ7TG

My ballot was full of obviousness (only one thing I've voted for has shown up so far).

I really love the lower regions of these polls—especially for bands with which I'm not already a know-it-all—because I get a really good setting to check out songs I've only ever heard a couple times or not at all and appreciately them differently.

37. It's Alright. (1988, Introspective, 118 points, 0 number ones)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9r0pISqCDRw

Spotify: http://open.spotify.com/track/5qhZObqAsOcnKWvknSPSfA

Thanks opplet.

Don't know if I've ever sat down and listened to this track closely. Very similar to a lot of the Release stuff that people love to slag on... [xpost to My October Symphony]

xxp
Should be 118 points, 4 votes, 0 number ones.

Was it news to anyone else that It's Alright is a cover?

Nope! I read the Discography liner notes when I got the tape in '93.

Most of these B-sides were on my ballot.

"Love Etc" and "Minimal" are the best of this their autumnal period.

Should have voted for It Couldn't Happen Here. Wonderful song.

Didn't vote for this, but pleasantly surprised how high it is.

36. The Truck Driver and his Mate. (1996, B-Side, 120 points, 6 votes, 0 number ones)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHI7OHqKzW8

Spotify: http://open.spotify.com/track/2LHGm35sLk2yfQ6HdLjCKg

RIF: This is based on the slogan for 'Yorkie' chocolate bar, "Big enough for the truck driver and his mate."

^^^ one of mine. Love the guitar riff (played by Tennant).

great guitar line in this one. My #16.

35. One More Chance. (1984/1987, Actually, 123 points, 5 votes, 0 number ones.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-6gZExiOno

and the original Bobby O mix

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

Spotify: http://open.spotify.com/track/28h0GZFHrgVZ0WWiOHSZCU

Truck Driver was my number 3, really happy to see it has other fans.

Truck Driver is an extremely complex song - goes from minor to major multiple times and has some seriously screwy chord progressions and seeming key changes. Somehow everything ties together but it has B-side written all over it. It kind of reminds me of "Cold Sweat" by James Brown, which is probably ridiculous but there you go.

34. Your Funny Uncle. (1988, B-side, 124 points, 6 votes, 0 number ones)

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

Spotify: http://open.spotify.com/track/05ohJ9ImZinFRQt4ZBpSWm

RIF: The song is inspired by the funeral of Neil Tennant's friend Chris Dowell whose death also inspired their song 'Being Boring'.

the highest b-side on my ballot. kind of expected it to be higher, tbh.

33. I Don't Know What You Want But I Can't Give It Any More. (1999, Nightlife, 129 points, 6 votes, 0 number ones)

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

Spotify: http://open.spotify.com/track/5EBSLmkX5qsuCrWAooatKL

^^^^^ LOVE that tune.

Amazing single, was shocked at the time how badly it did. It's still their lowest charting lead single from an album which is tragic.

I go back and forth on whether Nightlife or Fundamental is their best post-Very album. Nightlife is one of those period albums whose importance in my life squelches its chart record.

When I bought Behaviour in early '91, there was already a lot of snickering from friends about their sexuality; it wasn't lost on anyone that "Getting Away With It" was a duet between two men. As a sixteen-year-old closeted teenager, I didn't know the language of homosexuality yet, but I sensed the oddness of the point of view in "The End of the World" (its detachment) and "Being Boring" (subject and object blur).

Anyway, for those of you back in the '80s who understand what being gay was (or were gay yourselves), how did that affect your appreciation of the Pet Shop Boys? Did they seem more daring? Subversive? Like a well-kept secret that went deeper than strictly great pop? Or as strictly great pop, with the layers of politics and sexuality only revealing themselves later?

as a pre-pubescent, I felt cheated when I clocked that NT's lyrics were dancing around gender so pointedly. be bold! why hide! I thought. your songs are so wonderful, they must be universally respected and beloved - to engage gendered pronouns would rip scales from eyes, and show the ludicrousity of homophobically languaged abuse to thousands, I thought.

later, I couldn't remember the one "she" or "her" that had tipped me towards briefly reading their songs in a heteronormative context, and became aware of how little dancing there actually was, if you didn't approach the songs in a standard pop context, and that bullies were irrational and fuckwits anyway.

by the time Tennant did the ...Advocate? interview in ...1993? it seemed ludicrous to me that anyone could possibly need or want clarification about 'their' sexuality. I became aware that it wasn't, though.

['their' as in the entity Pet Shop Boys, that makes the music of the Pet Shop Boys; expressed such to acknowledge Mr Lowe's disinterest in identifying sexually under anyone else's terms.]

TBH, as a straight fan, I never thought about their sexual orientation or whether it even mattered to how I listened to the songs until they released "Go West", which I didn't like to the point of actively avoiding everything associated with Very (which was really, really easy to do in the US) and incorrectly assuming for a while that they lost a good chunk of their cleverness when they officially outed themselves, that the allusions and restrictions they imposed upon themselves were the extra parameter that elevated them from pedestrian to essential.

A year later, a friend played me Disco 2 and I realized I was being a douchebag.

Chris Lowe has never made any statements, by the way.

Somewhere in a shoe box in the basement, I've got an interview I did with Tennant and Lowe in '88. It was slated for the next issue of the magazine I worked for at the time, which promptly went bankrupt before it ever went to print. I've been telling myself the past few years to sit down and transcribe it and post it on my site, but I'm just too lazy. (It would also be major work to find it; the shoe box is filled with cassettes.) Anyway, I did, circumspectly, bring up the dreaded question, and got an icy stare and evasive answer from Tennant. Big surprise: he handled 97% of the talking during the interview. I've always felt pretty stupid for doing so. As I wrote on my site when I recounted the story a few years ago, it was like asking Stevie Wonder if it was true he was blind.

I distinctly remember when I became aware of their homosexuality: it was in a 1990 review of Behaviour in a local music magazine, which casually described Tennant's new lyrics as those of "a more mature gay man, having come to terms with x and y, in an era of z" or some such thing. It was mentioned in passing in a matter-of-fact fashion, such that I remember thinking I must have been inattentive to have not picked up on this previously. Not sure it felt like anything more than a piece of interesting trivia, as their sexuality was not something I had pondered up to that point either.

I was still relatively young and it may have had more resonance if I was gay myself. I suspect it changed my perceptions of them only insofar as certain lines in "Rent" or "It's A Sin" or "Being Boring" might suddenly have been open to different intepretations. Actually, it may have seemed kind of apt more broadly, as the one other fan I knew, my slightly older neighbour whose PSB 12"s I borrowed, was widely understood to be gay himself.

Anyway, I did, circumspectly, bring up the dreaded question, and got an icy stare and evasive answer from Tennant.

I've learned that their policy with most journalists before '93 was to admit Tennant's sexuality off the record.

as someone who only discovered the group through Bilingual and Nightlife as an out gay teenager, their evasiveness seems silly and anachronistic. Only a gay man would write and perform the songs they did in the way they did; it takes what feels like an almost willful ignorance to separate their music from their sexuality. Of course times were different back then.

As a straight kid living with a gay dad (who only did his business outside the house), PSB were about as oblique and transparent as everything else around me. I bought Please when I was 15-16 and loved it; my Dad, mostly a folk and new-age guy, came home one day with the Opportunities 12".

xpost It takes what feels like an almost willful ignorance now, but yeah, times are different. If they weren't, they likely would never have had much chart success in the US, I bet. I mean, even Boy George's sexuality was more often than not totally elided back then.

John Gill's "Queer Noises" has a section on the Pet Shop Boys - I remember thinking at the time that it was well-written and thoughtful but that was a few years ago. IIRC he takes a pretty negative view about their semi-non-closeted status.

^^^ YES. That was the journalist I was trying to remember. He was very offended.

It didn't change my own perception but what I really, really hated after "Very" and Tennant's coming out was that the general public/media perception (at least in North America) immediately went to "lol the gay duo who makes gay music for gay people" and that was pretty much that. So sometimes I wish Tennant hadn't come out, but then it would've probably not make much difference.

In America their profile is "lol the gay duo who did 'West End Girls.'"

I recall a friend recounting telling me, "It must be obvious? well it wasn't to me."

Well I kind of see why it wasn't obvious to everyone. I mean in the eighties everyone looked (and acted) gayer than the PSB.

That was part of the joke too: they were less, er, flamboyant than their peers.

So pre'93, were their shows not 75% gay men like they are now? I don't think I saw them live until the Nightlife tour.

That percentage is wrong in Germany and the UK.

Yeah, not true at all of any PSBs shows I've been to.

Since Miami is one of their US strongholds, the percentage of straights attending their shows is MUCH higher.

Hadn't heard their own version of this, really into it tonight.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Dj3ymyCl3s&NR=1&feature=fvwp

TBH, as a straight fan, I never thought about their sexual orientation or whether it even mattered to how I listened to the songs until they released "Go West", which I didn't like to the point of actively avoiding everything associated with Very (which was really, really easy to do in the US)

Except in gay clubs.

As a straight kid living with a gay dad (who only did his business outside the house)

Define "business."

A friend posted this old Drudge headline this morning--he can't remember the context. I think you might call this Soto bait:

http://rockcritics.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/drudge-boring1.jpg

how can you expect to be taken seriously?

i don't think they were *so* evasive about it, i was at school in 88/89 when there was a (Channel 4?) tv special made by Jon Savage that at one point had the boys sitting together, with one saying clearly that they first heard disco 'in all the gay clubs'. also there's plenty of lines to read between in the '... Vs America' book.

yeah but they're British, and most Americans assume they're all gay.

"Heart" was the album's FOURTH single (and it hit #1, to their and everyone's surprise).

The lowest-selling ever No 1 or something at the time, I seem to recall from my Record Mirror reading days.

Enjoyed today's Introspective article by Tom

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2011/aug/17/introspective-pet-shop-boys

Sadly Tom didn't vote in the poll, I don't know if he even lurks around here. Would've been interesting to see his choices.

Just finished Pet Shop Boys: A Life in Pop. Would I ever have loved to be at that Potemkin presentation in Trafalgar Square--any British people who were there? It reminded me a bit of seeing Daniel Lanois preview Neil Young's album at Nuit Blanche last year, with video screens all around Nathan Phillips Square, but of course there was no Neil at that. Loved the West End Girls too--much better than the West End Girls who were from Vancouver 20 years ago. Anyway, good film. Didn't even mind having to listen to so much of someone from the Killers--seemed like a knowledgeable fan.

Yeah, I was at that Potemkin show, am sure some other people here were too. It was good - I have a vague memory of some rain, but perhaps I'm imagining that? It was the first time I saw Potemkin, too, which helped.

The rain was real--somebody in the documentary said that people were politely putting away their umbrellas so other people behind them would be able to see okay.

I was there as well. There was a lot of rain, but as I recall the rain stopped just before the performance, and umbrellas were duly lowered. Great event, but I remember the film more than I remember the music, to be honest.

http://open.spotify.com/user/djperry1973/playlist/7LyurbFLzd9cnbyqaBdYKs

countdown from 50 - 1, five tracks missing because I couldn't find them (stupid Spotofiy, missing Behaviour) plus 2 versions of "I Want A Dog" (the superior original version and the boring Introspective version)

Format, a new B-Sides collection coming in February.

:(
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/mar/22/eric-watson?newsfeed=true

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGf1bqtrrMo

aww, RIP. A big reason why Catalogue is my favourite coffee table book.

RIP. Those sleeves and videos are burned into my brain.

There was some chatter about the Helena Springs version of A New Life on the poll threads; whether or not it was ever released and such.
Here it is! As with the cover of Do I Have To? by Inga, i think i might actually prefer it to theirs

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

I collated the chatter &c on one of the b-sides threads but great to be reminded of this - I should really rip it in case it vanishes.

I bought a 12-inch of "What Have I Done to Deserve This?" probably 5-10 years ago that I played for the first time tonight. I love "A New Life"--definitely would have had it on the ballot I submitted for this.

I think I prefer it to the A-side!

It doesn't feel like a decade since this exercise. I remembering reassessing Nightlife and concluding that said longplayer was upper-tier PSB. Pretty sure that's still my position.

"A New Life" is great and I voted for it in this poll! The one I regret not voting for is "Jack the Lad", which is probably in my top ten now