Pet Shop Boys - Bilingual POLL

On "Before":

Chris: "I love this. There's nothing extraneous on it. There's no unnecessary musical things happening."

Neil: "We set out to make it for America. This is the song described by Atlantic records, our American label at the time, as a 'straight out of the box smash'. It wasn't a hit there."

Chris: "I love Neil's vocal style on this."

Neil: "It's very smooth. I sing like a girl."

Chris: "Maybe you should sing like a girl more often."

Neil: "It sounds like no other record we've made. It's a very gorgeous, loving record. We wanted to work with Danny Tenaglia whom Tom Stephan had recommended to us. We didn't really know Danny's work. We were going to work with David Morales in New York, and David Morales's agent cancelled two days before we were going. The studio was booked. And Tom said, 'You should be working with Danny Tenaglia anyway', so we phoned him up and he, now to my astonishment, just dropped everything. Danny was a hip in-crowd thing at that point, but he wasn't the world's most famous DJ. Now, of course, it would be a big event."

Chris: "And we discovered that Danny, unlike most DJs, can bloody play the keyboards. Imagine our surprise. He did a great production job on this. When he put the bassline on I thought 'wow', because he didn't make the bassline follow the root note of the chords."

Neil: "We did it there in the studio."

Chris: "We deliberately didn't arrive with anything."

Neil: "It was based on two bits of songs Chris had written on his Ian Wright tape that he put together, very reluctantly."

Chris: "I'm always reluctant. It's two different songs being shoved into one. It's a waste."

Neil: "Danny had programmed some drums, and we put these bits in, and then in the studio I started singing the 'before' thing and Chris said, 'Go and sing that immediately', because it's good to sing immediately because you get the nuances. I forget nuances terribly easily. I went back to the hotel and wrote all the words, and I sang it the next day. The vocal sounded great and then the engineer wiped the third verse by mistake. I think the three girls' vocals on it are lovely. At first Danny didn't like it where they go 'before...before...before', but we realised it was the hook of the record. It's the same message as 'Love comes quickly', really, but from a slightly different point of view. When you're feeling down about love, when you're in a difficult situation, suddenly things can straighten out. Suddenly the right person comes into your life. The middle bits - 'there's a story of a man who loved too much' - are slightly different. I think they're about O. J. Simpson because that was on the telly the whole time then."

Chris: "This was just one of those things that sounded good from day one."

Neil: "I don't know why it wasn't a bigger hit. It was a hit in England but it did nothing in Europe. It's great when someone who you expect to do some big white record does some gorgeous smooth black record. I think it may be too linear. Quite quickly, you've heard everything. My ear expects, on the second verse, something else to happen. We tried to remix it in London but it didn't sound right - what we added sounded too different from what we'd recorded in New York - so we didn't use it."

Chris: "I have to say that people are wrong sometimes. The trouble is, we've set ourselves up as releasing big records, so if we do something different people are always going to be disappointed."

xx-post:

clattery, rather.

Oh, right! I didn't realise it was Johnny Marr that came up with that bit... it's one of my favourite parts of the song! I think 'Up Against It' is catchy enough without that part, but that's the part I always find myself singing along with, and the hook in the song that always sticks with me afterwards.

haaa amazing i had no idea danny tenaglia was involved w/ this record

'Before' was a hit here, yeah, and I love the production on it and the way it sounds overall. I seem to remember, though, that it wasn't well-received by some in comparison with previous Pet Shop Boys singles. As much as I like it, it does seem to be an odd choice for the first single. Having said that, I thought their single choices for Fundamental were total WTF.

Fans on the internet did not like "Before" when it came out and I think it cast a shadow on the album as a whole. I remember them complaining it was too airy and barely there. Which I guess is what Chris is saying, people were expecting a big record.

Tht's one of the few post-peak singles I do have memories of hearing in a club.

Yeah, 'Before' really isn't as anthemic or melodic as some of the Very singles had been, but I always liked the way it sounded "up" and "down" at the same time. I haven't seen the video for years, but I remember it being played a lot on MTV Europe/VH-1 at the time. It may have made more sense to lead the album campaign with 'Se A Vida E', which would have been a hell of a comeback single. I think 'Before' confounded people that were perhaps waiting for a 'Can You Forgive Her?' or something.

"Can You Forgive Her?" is a confounding first single too! "Go West" makes better sense.

'Can You Forgive Her?' has a really distinct shift from the verse to the chorus, though, whereas with 'Before' it's a little more difficult to pinpoint which part is meant to be the chorus, as the "you find your love before" part sounds as if it could be part of the verse, and the "before, before, before" part, while definitely a hook (as Neil explains above) doesn't really feel like a chorus either.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

well

Somehow my vote for "The Survivors" didn't work.

'To Step Aside' is great, I think, but being buried right near the end of the album (which is pretty long) does it no favours.

I'm really surprised by the 1st place. I had never paid any attention to that song. Had to go and play it to remember which one it was. And I have listened to Bilingual many, many times. Not a bad track though. It's not totally crazy that it won.

Yeah, I think it's definitely in the wrong position on the album. If it had been in the first half, perhaps it wouldn't be as overlooked.

Listening to this again, still a painfully underrated record.

I've brought it up before, but the album plays much better with the alternative track order that Neil once suggested. Maybe in the Further Listening liners?

THE MORE THAT IT HURTS
THE LESS THAT IT WORKS

Coming up against it now
We're coming up against it ooh

OTM.