In honour of Chris Lowe’s birthday I thought I’d pull this one out of the vault. This is a song from the Pet Shop Boys’ album Behaviour released in 1990 and as a single in its own right in 1991.
For those who know me well you will know that I am a pet shop boys fan from way back – introspective is one of my favourite albums of all time, Chris Lowe is a hero given that he’s the quiet one who stands in the shadows but still stands tall with his rack of keyboards and synths plus his intentional look of anonymity. Glasses, hat, something stylish and striking. He helped to define a generation.
Anyway according to PSB lore, Chris wrote this on a piano in his parents house in the early days of the band, and it was about a friend’s jealousy over his newfound friendship with Neil Tennant. Melodically it’s deadpan, which is the trademark of their early tracks, and at the same time its dramatic, Neil delivers his vocals in a theatrical way and this is reinforced on the extended version where Neil recites a passage from Shakespeare’s Othello. All of this is enveloped by Chris’s sweeping keyboards – lower scale piano, strings, which apparently they wanted Ennio Morricone to work on it but it didn’t work out that way for some reason. But he did work on my other favourite PSB song “It Couldn’t Happen Here”. Musically, this is built around analog synths and drum machines, this was recorded with Harold Faltermeyer who has an impressive range of synths and this along with the rest of the album has that warmth that you don’t expect to the sound. I remember being in year 10 when this came out, the Kylie Minogue/Stock/Aitken/Waterman partnership was coming to an end, and that glossy 80s sound was evolving as music technology changed – the pet shop boys dug deep into it and reverted to a time before MIDI technology existed and they did it well. Happy birthday Chris!
