Erasure were a better band, a better singles act, and have a better discography than the Pet Shop Boys

"Behaviour" only came out four years into their career anyway, meaning they have half the staying power of Erasure

peak era is 87-88, can live without rest.

For PSB or Erasure?

PSB

2 Pet Shop Boys & Dusty Springfield What Have I Done To Deserve This Aug 1987
8 Pet Shop Boys Rent Oct 1987
1 Pet Shop Boys Always On My Mind Dec 1987 Notes
1 Pet Shop Boys Heart Apr 1988
7 Pet Shop Boys Domino Dancing Sep 1988
4 Pet Shop Boys Left To My Own Devices Nov 1988

^^ can't front on that

whatever

Erasure's last genuinely good single = 'Love To Hate You'. Abba-Esque EP greater than the sum of it's parts.

Didn't _any_ 80s band drop a 90s joint as hot as "Always"?

"Behaviour" only came out four years into their career anyway, meaning they have half the staying power of Erasure

I think you mean 6 years, Dom. I like Erasure but you only need the singles album, their regular albums are patchy at best, and filled with keech at worse.

drama! is the only erasure single i consider truly great. but it is truly great.

Didn't _any_ 80s band drop a 90s joint as hot as "Always"?

Enjoy the Silence 1990

lol goths

sorry i have an app that posts that when ever depeche mode come up.

New Order, Regret, 1993

Duran Duran, Ordinar... ahem cough.

what's the darkest Erasure song?

"Blue Savannah"?

"Ship of Fools"

yup.

Erasure had zero peaks. They were the Hollies of their time - chart reliables, always on TV, always in the top ten, almost never at number one, never dreadful but hardly ever more than dull.

This may have been true in 1991.

(The header, I mean)

Very was released seven years after "West End Girls."

Pop! The First 20 Hits is solid, and Andy Bell's a fine singer, but, boy, did Clarke run out of tricks fast.

poor bastard, having to share a name with that cock out of hurricane #1

Alfred pretty much OTM -- I still have the albums up through Chorus but after that it was patchy as hell. The self-titled one is an odd bird, though -- Clarke's prog indulgence, indirectly. (Guest singers including Diamanda Galas!)

Pop! The First 20 Hits is solid, and Andy Bell's a fine singer, but, boy, did Clarke run out of tricks fast.

They have actually released some pretty strong albums lately. They had a strong down period from the mid 90s until the early oughties though.
Sure, you could say the same about Pet Shop Boys (And Erasure have never released anything as downright pointless as the "Release" album), but "Nightlife" was pretty good.

The Innocents is the only Erasure album I currently own (got rid of Chorus years ago), and no way is it as good as Introspective or Actually.

I won't say that Tennant's lyrics and point of view are the make-or-break point, but they DO inflect the music in subtle ways, as lyrics should. Meanwhile Bell seems too content with singing romantic generalities, and the music follows suit.

I consider "The Innocents" the weaker of the "classic" Erasure albums. It has Stephen Hague's typical late 80s standard "pop" sound stamped all over, and sounds less like a synthpop album than any other of their albums.

As a singles act I've always preferred Erasure. PSB are pretty unloveable, and irritating sometimes. The only albums I've owned/heard are The Innocents and Introspective, and I only liked the tracks that were singles on both (except "It's Alright").

PSB are pretty unloveable,

Perhaps the most insane thing I've ever read. Care to explain?

The premise of this thread is madness. As for 90s synthpop legends best singles:

Enjoy The Silence > Regret > Can You Forgive Her > Always. I'm not sure where Go West fits in here.

PSB have the edge in songwriting -- tunes and lyrics both. Erasure are fine on the former, often horrible on the latter. I'll call it a draw on vocals -- Tennant has a very limited instrument but uses it to great effect, Bell has range and volume but can get awfully shrill at times.

As for arrangements and instrumentation, PSB are certainly more tapped-in to dance music, but there's often something "canned" about their use of synths -- like they've loaded in the latest presets, bought the high-end sample libraries, hired the top programmers, but the arrangement ends up being about what's trendy instead of aligning with the feel of the song. Whereas Erasure's arrangements -- putting aside their unmemorable recent ventures into acoustic instrumentation -- are timeless and organic and really make their songs work. You could say: Tennant writes better melodies, but Clark writes better counter-melodies.

Unfortunately Erasure's arrangements are 1983 and Peter Powell and their songs were the kind of thing which Big Dennis Taylor reckoned was good pop on the Saturday Superstore Video Panel.

PSBs: ideas

Erasure: feelin's

"feelin's" of nausea morelike

blue savannah song i like u

Am I Right? is my fave, lol amirite

or amijusdreamin

meleeECI (4 weeks ago) Show Hide
-1 Poor comment Good comment
Marked as spam
Reply
Erasure has the stupidest videos ... I love their music though. Just to put my 2cents in ... Gay is wrong but the music is good .. 2 different things.
arona1969 (2 weeks ago) Show Hide
+1 Poor comment Good comment
Marked as spam
Reply
whats wrong in being gay? where are you from ?
meleeECI (2 weeks ago) Show Hide
-3 Poor comment Good comment
Marked as spam
Reply
The creator, God, made man and woman to be together. Homosexuality is as wrong as hetero sex outside of marriage. God has a design and a plan. That plan does not include sexual activity outside of the bounds he created it for. That is why Gay is wrong .. this is the wrong forum to be discussing it though.

philipbutlin (5 hours ago) Show Hide
0 Poor comment Good comment
Marked as spam
Reply
i'm as straight as it gets but this group was fantastic

Srsly tho, just soulseeked "Sometimes", awesome.

Enjoy The Silence > Regret > Can You Forgive Her > Always.

I cannot possibly view "Regret" a synthpop song. "World" maybe, "Regret", no.

As for PSB/Erasure:

Erasure:

Positive:
- Really strong melodies, some killer choruses
- The prementioned counter melodies. Those "polyphonic" synth melodies in the background are maybe the best thing of all about all of Vince Clarke's musical projects
- Some really cool synth sounds. Vince is a masterful synth programmer. Even late 80s FM synths he often managed to get to sound cool, which was extremely difficult.
- With the exception of "The Innocents" and some late 90s/early 00s stuff, always faithful to their synthpop roots.
- Usually avoiding failed experiments with musical styles they better not visit too often

Negative:
- Extremely irrelevant for most of the 90s
- Andy Bell. I am sorry, but his vocals are sometimes terribly annoying
- Not that I am very interested in lyrics, but, yes, they are sometimes very horrible
- Could sometimes have benefited from being slightly more ambitious, and yet, the one time they were (the eponymous mid 90s album) they kind of failed.
- They aren't Yazoo nor Depeche Mode

As for Pet Shop Boys:

Positive:
- A strong row of 90s albums
- A great tongue-in-cheek and slightly ironic approach that gives their music sort of a double edge
- Some really classy songs
- Neil Tennant's vocal style fits perfectly

Negative:
- To many "hard" digital samples in their 80s material at times
- Some really ill-advised attempts at experimenting with "dance" styles they should have left untouched (house, latino etc.)
- The "Release" album. Worse than anything Erasure have ever done.-
- From the 90s onwards, Neil Tennant has sometimes sung in the same annoying falsetto way that Andy Bell does, decreasing his lead in the vocals part

Geir OTM re: Erasure, not so much re: PSB.

I like both these bands; which one I prefer depends on my mood.

PSB tower over Erasure.

PSB tower over Erasure.

In my mind this is true; in my ear I'm not so sure.

let's not think about the PSB's towers, please.

Geir has a couple of valid points, but this thread shouldn't even exist. True, the PSB have their highs (Actually) and lows (Release). But Erasure at their best is far from being at the same league as the the PSB at their best.

My thoughts exactly, except I also like Release (and might be the only one on this board).

I'm glad someone already mentioned the Abba-esque EP - great!

I don't consider "Actually" a high. It sounds way too 1987. Sounding 1982 is good, sounding 1987 not.

Just bouncing this as I forgot to add that "Chorus" was a better album that anything Pet Shop Boys have ever been close to coming up with.

Released at a time when synthpop was hardly existant at all, Erasure managed to come up with one of the best synthpop albums ever released.
It remains their only flawless classic though.

I've found myself listening to I Say I Say I Say a lot today... man, did Vince and Martyn Ware get some wonderful synth sounds on this record. In fact, I think at this point Vince wasn't even using any drum machines and all of the drum sounds come from Vince's collection of synths, just like The Human League did on their first couple of albums before they started using the Linn. 'Take Me Back', 'So The Story Goes', 'Run To The Sun', 'Always', 'All Through The Years', 'Miracle' and 'Because You're So Sweet' are all-time Erasure tracks for me, and I enjoy 'I Love Saturday' and 'Man In The Moon' ... really, there's only 'Blues Away' that I'm not so keen on.

otm

PSB like Depeche Mode... if you weren't there in the 80s, I don't see how you become infatuated with them, takes a leap of faith to believe they were amazing

Erasure? A little respect is all you need

I love PSB. I didn't listen to them until very late, but I actually tie them more to the early-mid '90s. That's just me - I love Discography and even without reading the dates, those clearly feel like they were conceived in the '80s in terms of sound and content. But Very is my favorite PSB album and it evokes memories of my first encounters with gay culture and AIDS in the '90s. It was bewildering to me as a kid because I didn't know anyone who was gay growing up (a few would eventually come out as gay when they were older) and yet the national debate was visible and the stigma from a conservative culture was still prevalent where I was. Even people who didn't have any animosity towards gays didn't see them as equal or normal. Even if they were embracing gay artists, they were still embracing a pop culture that frequently denigrated or mocked gays in some way. But I could see the beginning of change - it may feel like a backward time and place now, but from what I can tell, it was a big leap from the '80s. Also, I didn't grow up with anyone with AIDS, but it was a big, widely-known cause and the schools in retrospect did a great job in educating students about it. That's in stark contrast to the horrific picture painted by people I know now who were living here in NYC in the Village during the '80s. Every time I put on Very I actually choked up a bit for how mournful and hopeful it sounds, and it builds to that wonderful peak in "Go West." It's similar to what it's like listening to Sam Cooke or Aretha Franklin sing about civil rights. So yeah, I wasn't there, but I love PSB, I think they're one of the greats.

I enjoy Depeche Mode a lot too, I went from mildly liking them to loving them over the years, partly because I didn't realize how charming they could be. Their live shows are great, some of the best I've seen visually. They're still primarily a singles band to me though. (I know many have argued for their albums, but I still prefer to hear their singles strung together on a compilations.)

And I enjoy Erasure a lot too - I knew several people who had Pop! and became familiar with those songs even before I knew who they were or really anything else in pop music.

Erasure are very much the better band

As a New Order fan, I didn't pay much attention to either of these bands. PSB definitely had better hooks.

I did like Bronski Beat though.

And I don't know why I thought Vince Clarke was in Bronski Beat. Senior moment.

I'm seeing New Order and PSB in the fall (at least I hope), but I would have to say New Order is the greater band - what they accomplished is tremendous, few can match it.

I like a lot of Erasure: Pop! is wall-to-wall jams. "Chains of Love" and "Love to Hate You" are frequent karaoke jams. Andy Bell comes off as an average guy with average thoughts, which is a large part of his charm and attractiveness as singer/lyricist.

Depeche Mode exists for my 19-25 y/o students. They know "Enjoy the Silence" and "Personal Jesus" by name.

Those are literally the two Depeche Mode songs I was thinking about on the bus this morning.

I'm pretty sure I ended up with Bob Saget's copy of Erasure's Pop! (not going to tell the story so don't ask) and am just absolutely obsessed with "Drama!"

I kind of think Depeche Mode > Erasure > PSB > New Order as far as singles go.

"Victim of Love" and "Drama!" are two of the best imo -- along with their cover of "Take A Chance on Me"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wX37rIFf9Tg

It's also wild to watch this video with the knowledge that Erasure's entire oeuvre got written about less in solemn terms of "queer identity" than like Frank Ocean or Phoebe Bridgers or whatever

I remember a friend's younger sister going to see Duran Duran when she was 13 or 14, on the Seven and the Ragged Tiger tour; Erasure opened up and she came home saying, in effect, "I was not prepared for that."

I'm seeing New Order and PSB in the fall (at least I hope)

So am I! I have tickets for both nights at the Hollywood Bowl. We'll see if it happens this year.

Pet Shop Boys are a great “albums” band, imo.

I saw DM a few years ago, an old friend was opening for them and so we got absurdly good seats. It was an experience, watching a bunch of Gen Xers screams along to every word of every song. Really fun, tbh!

DM win for me anyday, then Erasure, NO, and PSB.

Be prepared to hear the complete collapse of Bernard Sumner's voice, alas.

xxpost

You could have made that statement before any live New Order appearance since 1981, tbh

I know!

Pet Shop Boys "Disco" remix album (in the cassette format in this case) was the first album I ever bought, and it's a masterpiece. Listening to the Erasure hits takes me back to youth discos and pubs and they were pretty great. But the PSB one is like a sacred object to me.

That New Order/Pet Shop Boys tour is Erasure erasure!

NO/PSB neeeevveeeer mention Erasure.

Love Erasure! though imo they are very much a singles band, i am not as much of a fan of their album cuts, personally.

I remember a friend's younger sister going to see Duran Duran when she was 13 or 14, on the Seven and the Ragged Tiger tour; Erasure opened up and she came home saying, in effect, "I was not prepared for that."

Hmm...you sure it was Seven and the Ragged Tiger? Notorious seems more likely since that was 1986 and Erasure were two albums in, where during SATRT they didn't exist yet!

Saw Erasure on concert about 3 years ago and it was genuinely thrilling. Bare bones show with just two backing singers and a nice but basic lighting setup. I am not even a big fan but it was the best thing I've seen in years. Andy Bell is a blast.

Yeah, I had the album chronology wrong, but Erasure opened DD’s two concerts at Madison Square Garden in June 1987.

A difference between Erasure and PSB is that the latter has a fairly linear sense of melody for the vocals - fewer notes and closer together let's say. It is less ambitiously composed - whereas Erasure melodies are up and down the scales, often in arpeggios if you think of songs like "Love To Hate You" or "Star" etc. In both cases it complements their backing music which for Erasure relies on springy sequencers and for the Petshop Boys is more chordal, has more synth washes and atmospherics.

Basically the Petshop Boys are the John Lennon of synth pop and Erasure are Paul McCartney. I guess that means Depeche Mode are George Harrison.

a George Harrison who affects a love of leather

George Harrison is the vegan Depeche Mode

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jE7-RlrQx2c

the 1993 channel 4 special 'Camp Christmas' is on youtube in full, co-presented by Andy Bell and Melissa Etheridge, they perform several Christmas songs together. In terms of differences between Erasure and PSB, it's difficult to imagine Neil Tennant replacing Bell here. Also features Derek Jarman, Martina Navratilova, Justin Fashanu, Armistead Maupin, Stephen Fry and many more. Fry called it "ghastly and under-rehearsed".

Erasure are the synth-pop Beach Boys, A Little Respect's melody is straight-up Brian Wilson anyway
Drama! is the genre's Good Vibrations
Blue Savannah is Don't Worry Baby

I mean I could go on

there is no comparison as it is like saying the smiths are better than the cure or the clash are better than the sex pistols!

"Blue Savannah" is gorgeous.

Fat Vegetarian Goths > Fat Vegan Racists so The Cure wins.

Was Morrissey racist in the '80s and/or '90s or is this a recent development?

The Smiths suck

1986 — “Reggae, for example, is to me the most racist music in the entire world. It's an absolute total glorification of black supremacy... I don’t have very cast iron opinions on black music other than black modern music which I detest. I detest Stevie Wonder. I think Diana Ross is awful. I hate all those records in the Top 40 – Janet Jackson, Whitney Houston. I think they’re vile in the extreme... Obviously to get on Top Of The Pops these days, one has to be, by law, black,” he told Melody Maker.

1992 — He was quoted in Q Magazine saying: “I don’t really think, for instance, black people and white people will ever really get on or like each other.”

Ugh. Breaking my heart Moz.

How do you regard Erasure in comparison with the Pet Shop Boys? Aren't they very much alike?
Erasure In many ways, yes, they are very much alike, at least superficially. Both are British synthpop duos who started off in the 1980s and have openly gay vocalist/lyricists. And I do like Erasure tremendously, counting them among my favorites. But I like the Pet Shop Boys far more. Pet Shop Boys
I believe Erasure and the Pet Shop Boys are comparable as performers, although I think Neil and Chris put on a better show overall. I also think the Boys have a better sense of style. But, much more importantly, they're vastly superior songwriters. Clarke/Bell is a pretty good songwriting team. But Tennant/Lowe is, in my opinion, a truly great songwriting team. More pointedly, Andy simply isn't in the same league as Neil when it comes to writing lyrics.

For every two Erasure songs that I like, I can name another that I don't care for. By contrast, out of more than 300 PSB songs to date, I can honestly say that (as I note elsewhere) there are only three that I dislike: "The Sound of the Atom Splitting," "Love Is a Catastrophe," and "Ego Music." To put it another way, I like about 67% of what Erasure does, whereas I enjoy roughly 99% of the Pet Shop Boys' output. Also, I find both the early and more recent albums by Erasure rather weak—I think they peaked in the 1990s with the albums from Chorus through Cowboy—whereas PSB's albums were top-notch from the start and have, in my opinion, maintained an unremitting level of excellence. (Let's just say that Disco 2 was an anomaly. )

I have a warped little dream: that someday Erasure will release an album of nothing but Tennant/Lowe songs, perhaps including a few remakes but ideally made up mostly of previously unreleased originals. Better yet, the Pet Shop Boys would also produce the album, while allowing Clarke a free hand with his synth arrangements, of which he is an absolute master. One song could even be a "duet," in which both Vince and Chris play instruments and both Andy and Neil sing. (Can you imagine a love-duet between those two? Half of me thrills at the thought; the other half cringes in horror.) Such an album could be nirvana. (Please note the lower-case n.) Of course, it will almost certainly never happen, but I still love to imagine it.

C'mon guys—you can work it out.