The Pet Shop Boys' first twenty singles...

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well Ned, this has inspired me to check out more of the PSBs - so i'll have to get back to you on that.

― jonviachicago, Wednesday, 23 February 2005 22:30 (twenty-one years ago)

Rah!

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 23 February 2005 22:32 (twenty-one years ago)

Too funny: I wrote a piece on the awesome "Young Offender" for today's Stylus: http://stylusmagazine.com/feature.php?ID=1491

(* cough. There's my bit of self-promotion).

― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Wednesday, 23 February 2005 22:41 (twenty-one years ago)

I've always defended "Please," which has a couple of other album tracks as least as good as the singles ("Why Don't We Live Together" and especially "Two Divided By Zero").

― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Wednesday, 23 February 2005 22:45 (twenty-one years ago)

ALFRED OTM I LOVE THOSE SONGS TO ITTY BITTY PIECES

― The Ghost of Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Wednesday, 23 February 2005 22:54 (twenty-one years ago)

"I may not always love you/you may not care..."

― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Wednesday, 23 February 2005 22:56 (twenty-one years ago)

But intuition tells me, baby
There's something we could share
If we dare
Why don't we...?

― The Ghost of Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Wednesday, 23 February 2005 22:57 (twenty-one years ago)

(Actually is underrated because it doesn't beat out albums like London Calling and Pet Sounds in canon polls.)

― The Ghost of Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Wednesday, 23 February 2005 23:01 (twenty-one years ago)

(Yes, I am crazy.)

― The Ghost of Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Wednesday, 23 February 2005 23:02 (twenty-one years ago)

Please is my favourite PSB album. Well, when it isn't Very, anyway.

― edward o (edwardo), Wednesday, 23 February 2005 23:03 (twenty-one years ago)

I thught that was going to be an "Actually, Please is a Very Flamboyant Release" kind of sentence.

― Alba (Alba), Wednesday, 23 February 2005 23:06 (twenty-one years ago)

Such relentless introspective alternative behavior.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 23 February 2005 23:07 (twenty-one years ago)

do I have to?

― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Wednesday, 23 February 2005 23:09 (twenty-one years ago)

I prefer Actually to Pet Sounds, actually, very much.

― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Wednesday, 23 February 2005 23:16 (twenty-one years ago)

Of course the Pet Shop Boys nearly made the top 10 twice last year...

and Erasure have THIS year, with a single as weak as the charts sales benchmark itself

rockist til i die

― Sven Bastard (blueski), Wednesday, 23 February 2005 23:45 (twenty-one years ago)

Please - their Release 'Nightlife' was Very Introspective, Actually, but Disco (too).

Oh, I give up!

― davidsim (davidsim), Wednesday, 23 February 2005 23:48 (twenty-one years ago)

No mention of "How Can You Expect To Be Taken Seriously?". Boo. I love Neil's inept guitar solo and the Bobby Brown backbeat

― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Wednesday, 23 February 2005 23:59 (twenty-one years ago)

i wish there was the equivalent of the 80s Pet Shop Boys in the Top Ten today...is there?

Outkast

― Mr. Snrub, Thursday, 24 February 2005 00:05 (twenty-one years ago)

I would be a bit more understanding of this claim if you weren't the one also claiming how it's a sad thing that Blink-182 are breaking up. I fear we must be opposed on these varying points.

Eh. If I was around in the late 70s, I'd be more upset if The Buzzcocks broke up than I would be if ABBA did. I understand that a lot of reasonable people on this board would disagree, though.

― The Good Dr. Bill (The Good Dr. Bill), Thursday, 24 February 2005 00:12 (twenty-one years ago)

You're assuming ABBA is a group composed of flesh-and-blood carbon-based lifeforms. Those humanoids were intermittently spectacular tunes though.

― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Thursday, 24 February 2005 00:19 (twenty-one years ago)

It's Buzzcocks, not The Buzzcocks, tsk.

― Late 70s Alba (Alba), Thursday, 24 February 2005 00:21 (twenty-one years ago)

Huh. I wonder why I never noticed that before.

It doesn't seem like anyone makes much of a note of that anymore, in any event.

― The Good Dr. Bill (The Good Dr. Bill), Thursday, 24 February 2005 00:26 (twenty-one years ago)

Re intelligent chart-pop: correct me if I'm wrong but weren't Pet Shop Boys coming from out of period (the eighties) when it was expected that UK pop stars/acts would mostly or often write their own lyrics (and I mean "pop" in the narrowest sense). These days when we think of that sort of pop it's usually in that SAK-Max Martin lineage of pre-fab pop. I wonder if Xenomania and Richard X are the closest we therefore come. If Neil Tennant had become a pop svengali at the beginning of the nineties I could imagine him coming up with singles like "The Show" and "Some Girls".

― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Thursday, 24 February 2005 00:27 (twenty-one years ago)

If Neil Tennant had become a pop svengali at the beginning of the nineties

Wasn't he trying to do that in reverse? (Working with older acts -- Liza, Dusty -- than younger ones.) But then there is the Cicero conundrum.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 24 February 2005 00:42 (twenty-one years ago)

Yeah, you're right, Tim. Though 1985 was a weird time. The original wave of self-writing pretty boy/vaguely arty nu-romantic pop and scruffy/wacky post-punk pop groups were on the wane and SAW was around the corner.

It was a pop gap that the PSBs lucked into, kind of. I can't think what other major (British) pop acts started around the same time.

― Alba (Alba), Thursday, 24 February 2005 00:46 (twenty-one years ago)

I would be a bit more understanding of this claim if you weren't the one also claiming how it's a sad thing that Blink-182 are breaking up. I fear we must be opposed on these varying points.

Eh. If I was around in the late 70s, I'd be more upset if The Buzzcocks broke up than I would be if ABBA did. I understand that a lot of reasonable people on this board would disagree, though

The Pet Shop Boys and ABBA are both stupendous pop bands. To make any such comparison between Blink-182 and Buzzcocks is a travesty of the highest order. It's like saying Conor Oberst = Dylan. But worse.

― Ben Dot (1977), Thursday, 24 February 2005 00:57 (twenty-one years ago)

Conor Oberst kind of does = Dylan. But worse.

― Alba (Alba), Thursday, 24 February 2005 01:02 (twenty-one years ago)

Aside from the 20 years, what's the significant difference between the two, exactly?

― The Good Dr. Bill (The Good Dr. Bill), Thursday, 24 February 2005 01:03 (twenty-one years ago)

This is some derailment.

― Alba (Alba), Thursday, 24 February 2005 01:04 (twenty-one years ago)

Hey, I just stepped in to make some pointless, childish swipe at PSB, Ned started the B-182 bizness. :)

― The Good Dr. Bill (The Good Dr. Bill), Thursday, 24 February 2005 01:09 (twenty-one years ago)

*whistles idly*

SO ANYWAY, of the first twenty singles there, which is the most underrated? My answer after dinner...

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 24 February 2005 02:20 (twenty-one years ago)

"Love Comes Quickly" is the most underrated, I think.

― edward o (edwardo), Thursday, 24 February 2005 02:24 (twenty-one years ago)

Yup. It was a never hit here in the States, and it took YEARS for me to warm to it.

― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Thursday, 24 February 2005 02:43 (twenty-one years ago)

"(Actually is underrated because it doesn't beat out albums like London Calling and Pet Sounds in canon polls.)"

i would say the beach boys are definitely in the same league as the pet shop boys. the clash are several rungs below both those groups.(not that i don't enjoy some clash songs, i do. but if anyone on that sonic youth thread is still wondering who the most overrated rock band is...)

the pet shop boys should have a national holiday in their honour and several life-size statues placed wherever they would inspire the most public uplift in the U.K.

― scott seward (scott seward), Thursday, 24 February 2005 02:52 (twenty-one years ago)

SO ANYWAY, of the first twenty singles there, which is the most underrated?

It's absolutely "Love Comes Quickly".

i would say the beach boys are definitely in the same league as the pet shop boys.

I am a big whore for amazing vocal harmonies and I can't think of a single Beach Boys song that's better than 90% of Actually.

― The Ghost of Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Thursday, 24 February 2005 03:08 (twenty-one years ago)

"Love Comes Quickly" was for a long time (and may be still) Neil Tennant's favorite PSB song.

― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Thursday, 24 February 2005 03:11 (twenty-one years ago)

funny, I listened to "introspective" today and thought of this thread; "I'm not scared" is pure genius : PSB at it's most moroder-esque.

― fernando, Thursday, 24 February 2005 03:34 (twenty-one years ago)

Love Comes Quickly certainly was, for nearly two decades, my most underrated PSB song. I never 'got' it. I always thought it a retread of the album's first hit singles. (And also, somehow, I linked it with Janet Jackson's "Let's Wait A While" - I dunno, I think I saw both videos for the first time time right after each other.)

Anyway, when I heard the Blank & Jones remix on PopArt, it finally clicked. Sooner or later, this happens to everyone. To everyone.

― davidsim (davidsim), Thursday, 24 February 2005 05:09 (twenty-one years ago)

Pretty much I have to agree, as soon as I posed the question I almost felt I had answered it in my head, and all the reasons given are OTM. What more could I add, though? I'll have to suggest another one.

Meanwhile, which of the *videos* for those songs did you like the best? (Alternately, which of the sleeves?)

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 24 February 2005 05:12 (twenty-one years ago)

"So Hard", though I can't quite think why. Maybe it was because it was the first PSB video I ever saw.

― edward o (edwardo), Thursday, 24 February 2005 05:28 (twenty-one years ago)

Best video? The ones with decadent people behaving decadently in black and white. Rent, Jealously and, best of all, Being Boring. Herb Ritts. Black-and-white. A decadent party. The guy falling on the stairs. Gorgeous models pretending to pretend to goof spontaneously.

They tried to reprise the magic with Se A Vida E (which had its moments) and one of the last videos on PopArt whose name I forget (and which didn't).

― davidsim (davidsim), Thursday, 24 February 2005 05:29 (twenty-one years ago)

I think that several of the First Twenty are underrated, but the most overrated is certainly "Being Boring".

― MindInRewind (Barry Bruner), Thursday, 24 February 2005 05:31 (twenty-one years ago)

Hm, why so, Barry?

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 24 February 2005 05:32 (twenty-one years ago)

It's one of their most highly regarded singles -- probably one of their four or five best. There are four or five better songs than "Being Boring" on "Behaviour" alone.

It's not a very dynamic song, as I find the vocals flat and monotonous, with the melody lacking in punch and sparkle -- unlike, "Rent" for example. That's a similarly reserved-sounding song, but the melody is irresistably playful. Yeah, I know, "Rent" is a sardonically-told little love story, while "Being Boring" tackles far more serious issues, and a playful song would detract from that message. But the even-keeled melody they left behind doesn't emote at me in the least.

Pet Shop Boys have made great ballads ("Jealousy") and they can do the preachy, didactic thing ("It's a Sin"), but it needs to be *huge* and over the top.

― MindInRewind (Barry Bruner), Thursday, 24 February 2005 05:53 (twenty-one years ago)

Whereas when they try to communicate seriousness by being laid-back (like on "Being Boring"), I don't think it works, at least not for them.

Maybe being over-the-top isn't the most appropriate way to communicate a message like the one in "Being Boring". I certainly wouldn't object to that statement, but if that sort of melody is what's necessary for putting forth that message, then that sort of song doesn't necessarily make for interesting listening. At least not compared to what the PSB are otherwise capable of.

― MindInRewind (Barry Bruner), Thursday, 24 February 2005 05:58 (twenty-one years ago)

most overrated is "opportunities"

― j blount (papa la bas), Thursday, 24 February 2005 06:02 (twenty-one years ago)

“It’s A Sin” – Hi-NRG Catholic guilt trip invents the London Boys sound! Complete disco juggernaut, also the best Erasure single EVER MADE and still one of the weaker PSB number ones.
well detailed and nearly accurate review.
i disagree - it's their best - many i've spoken to love this and aren't psb fans.
did the group who parodied pop parody themselves - the spinal tap of balearic beats

― neil lowe and chris tennant, Thursday, 24 February 2005 07:16 (twenty-one years ago)

i love the big buxom brunette in domino dancing...

― neil lowe and chris tennant, Thursday, 24 February 2005 07:21 (twenty-one years ago)

Best video?

Definitely, Domino Dancing. I also think this is their most underrated single because it is a good example of how, as Momus would argue, you can get something fresh and original by not getting things 'right'. Clearly the PSB, by choosing to record this during the over-produced, synthesized late eighties, 'failed' to make it sound genuinely latin. Instead they created something a bit camp that sounded truly unique. When they did get it 'right' (Bilingual) it wasn't as good.

― daavid (daavid), Thursday, 24 February 2005 07:58 (twenty-one years ago)

i don't know, "domino dancing" sounds genuinely freestyle enough to me

― j blount (papa la bas), Thursday, 24 February 2005 08:03 (twenty-one years ago)

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