Friday 18 July 2008

Too much time to find for ourselves...



I fancied a trip down memory lane recently, and dug out a Pet Shop Boys compilation I put together a few years back. Some great stuff, and a reminder of what a brilliantly consistent singles band they were (and still are, to some extent, although their last two or three albums haven't really registered on my radar). They always stood out, largely due to Neil Tennant's ability to spin the kind of intelligent lyric that really shouldn't have fitted comfortably with the 80s/90s pop scene, but somehow did.

I remembered seeing this site a while back eulogising Being Boring as the most beautiful song ever written - how many songs have a whole website dedicated to them? Whether or not it's *the* most beautiful is obviously questionable, but listening to its lyrics can certainly send a chill down the spine. Especially the last verse:

"Now I sit with different faces
In rented rooms and foreign places.
All the people I was kissing,
Some are here and some are missing
In the nineteen-nineties.

I never dreamt that I would get to be
The creature that I always meant to be.
But I thought, in spite of dreams,
You’d be sitting somewhere here with me."


I love a good reminiscing lyric, and it's rare to find one as eloquent and resonant as Being Boring. Truly heartbreaking stuff.

MP3: Pet Shop Boys - Being Boring

And to prove they can do upbeat as well as reflective, here's a later cut from the mid-90s.

MP3: Pet Shop Boys - Se A Vida E (That's The Way Life Is)