PET SHOP BOYS – "Always On My Mind"

I’m not a huge fan of the PSB but I like this better than most of their stuff.
I think Neil Tennant benefits from singing a lyric which he hadn’t written himself – and particularly one which is such an iconic song.
The Elvis version is a camp classic with his intense, theatrical performance. PSB achieve a different sort of camp here with NTs almost affectless delivery contrasting with the frenetic pulse and synthetic brass flourishes of the music.

I’d argue that the marks for this and “It’s A Sin” are the wrong way round 😉

A well-deserved 10, although maybe not to the “Always in my House” version.

Was the Willie Nelson version known in the UK at all? It was huge around 82-83 in America, and I thought of this as a Willie Nelson song when the PSB version came out. Willie also sings it in an understated way, which is probably the best way to approach a lyric that can come off as “things on my mind: we’re out of milk, you, my sister’s birthday is next week.”

I was surprised by the 10 for this. It’s probably my favourite of the PSB’s number ones, but I still think they had stronger singles which didn’t get there. I love the weird roaring noise which opens the track, it gives me a shiver of anticipation for the rest of the song every time I play it.

And I’m glad it blocked Fairytale of New York, which just irritates me.

Finally, a PSB single gets a 10! I was kind of worried, since I knew it was the only one left that had a chance.

I find AOMM a big yawn, and the love for it expressed here quite baffling. The synth chords bludgeon (I swear this band’s arrangement and keyboard skills went backwards from their first album), the voice is thin, the rhythm track is unremarkable. I’d take True Faith (let alone Peekaboo – a genuine ’80s ’10’ in my view) by at least several points over this any day of the week. To me, AOMM sounds knocked out in about half an hour using It’s a Sin’s presets, which were lousy. I understand that I’m in the minority on this, but apart from people reliving youthful PSB-mania I don’t see how this can be seriously thought an especially delightful record, let alone one of the best ever made. Unwanted consistency watch: where does one begin? Perhaps with TomScore(Jailhouse Rock) = 7. I mean, good God. For me, AOMM can score no more than a:
5

BTW this was a nice blurb and all but my favourite review of AOMM is still Tanya Headon’s, which I find remarkable not just because it’s ROFL, but also because I cannot object to a single thing she says about it. I was going to post a link but I can’t find it 🙁

“The Pet Shot Boys pull a trick where they inject two new bass notes that bridge to the post-chorus.”

I recall them saying in interview how they had deliberately simplified the song – reduced the chord sequence or something. What mattered to me was that it was at the RIGHT SPEED.

I woke up in my first year college room, turned on the radio on my modular ghetto-blaster thing, and went back to sleep. I had a dream that went at a tremendous canter, and when i woke up again, this was the dream tempo on the radio.

MY. FIRST. SINGLE. And the 12″ at that. which i still have.

Not actually my first single – i’d had (eg) Rubber Ducky by Sesame Street bought for me when i was very small – but the first one i bought for myself. Which (if you know me) seems like a late stage, but before now I had been happy KILLING MUSIC BY HOME TAPING the top 40.

As others have variously observed, I’d give either this or It’s A Sin a 10 depending on my mood that week.

That year I thought xmo number one was going to be Barcelona.

Elvis recorded it first in 1972. In the States, it was a b-side. Willie Nelson had the next biggest hit with it in 1982, peaking At number 5. But I was surprised to find that this version made it to number 4. Not as enthused as Tom’s 10, more like an 8. A good overhaul of what, at that time, was already an Adult Contemporary evergreen.

I hadn’t seen Tanya’s review of this, but boy oh boy, she had it right on the nose. Given some space and restraint, this thing might have some impact, but as it is it’s an awful blaring piece of crap brought down by the fact that it’s exactly the kind of thing that Neil Tennant cannot be trusted with whatsoever. I genuinely hate this.

Maybe the truest version of the song was the quiet, shattered dignity of Willie Nelson’s acoustic reading, one of the legions of great singles released in 1982 but seldom acknowledged as such. Elvis sang it like a brute belatedly tamed, probing into his deepest, least hardened arteries to discover the core of tenderness which would still justify his asking “Love Me Tender” in Vegas, and as with most of his later work was interpreted as simply another chapter of signifiers in his dysfunctional descent.

The Pet Shop Boys were asked to participate in a Granada TV special in the summer of 1987 to mark the tenth anniversary of Presley’s death. They settled for “Always On My Mind” with the declared intent of making it sound as little like Elvis as possible. On the programme they came across as a wiser and disillusioned Flanagan and Allen, mournfully bearing haversacks as they proceeded slowly down a back-projected railway track. As a performance it was as decidedly at odds with the relatively bland fare proferred by the other artists taking part as the duo themselves were defiantly at odds with the suffocating blandness of the upper reaches of 1987 chart pop. It elicited a massive response, and though initially reluctant to release it as a single, they went back into the studio with Julian Mendelsohn and recorded a full version; too late to appear on the Actually album (though it was added to later pressings), it was rush-released at year’s end and became the best Christmas number one since “Don’t You Want Me?” and possibly the best Christmas number one ever.

In 1987 the Pet Shop Boys ruled pop – even if, other than New Order, the Smiths (defunct by year’s end) and SAW at their best, there was so little competition. The ingenuity, originality and genuine (not second-guessed from quarter-century-old soul sides) honesty of their work was enough to make most other mainstream pop in 1987 feel ashamed to call itself pop (particularly since, from Curiosity to D’Arby, they didn’t really want to be pop but soul, or at least pub rock). If one record were to be chosen which summed up the Thatcherite, post-Big Bang Britain of this period it would have to be Actually, the group’s second album; few pop songs of any era were as politely but brutally honest about the societal milieu from which they emerged than “King’s Cross” or, especially, “Rent” – the latter courageously released as a single (and it still made the top ten), a song so good that artists as diverse as Liza Minnelli and Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine would subsequently be able to derive new meanings from it. “It Couldn’t Happen Here,” complete with an Ennio Morricone orchestral arrangement, is a noble litany for what could be Aids, or more likely Clause 28 – if only Kenneth Williams, then screaming towards the agonising end of his guilt-suffocated life, could have heard this music he would have understood it in a second.

“Always On My Mind” follows the tried and tested Hi-NRG template of delivering ballads at ballad tempo while the rhythm exultantly rushes along at double speed, but the Pet Shop Boys do it with exceptional elan, complete with the triple tease of the delayed intro. Neil Tennant delivers the song in the persona of someone who knows he’s a bit of a shit (whereas Elvis simply sounds bemused and confused) but still needs that love, that company – he walks the sardonic/vulnerable tightrope with enviable skill, dropping down his “my mind” with the ingenious altered chord changes in the second half of the chorus as though challenging you to guess whether he has a mind, as such. As with Bernard Sumner, Tennant’s “soul” is latent and inherent in his vocal uncertainty; unable and indeed unwilling to emulate the howls, screams and other “soulcialist” memes deemed necessary to signify Soul Passion And Honesty (and predictably the Pet Shop Boys turned out to be more genuinely socialist than most of the “real” acts of the time), Tennant derives his vocal style from the unlikely sources of Donovan, Al Stewart and Jonathan King – verging on the deadpan but never less than tactile and, when he needs to be, extremely moving.

But the little addendum incorporated into the final, most minute seconds of the record’s fadeout is one of the most chilling endings to any pop single; Tennant, strolling out of sight at the far end of the horizon, turning back briefly and saying, “Maybe I didn’t love you.” The portrait of the thrusting Thatcherkid too busy greedily sizing up his bonuses and stuffing himself with cold trinkets signifying nothing (see the song “Shopping”) that not only didn’t he have the time to say and do all those “little things,” but that he viewed the concept of “little things” with near-inexpressible contempt. Five years later, burned out in his bedsit, he suddenly wonders when the sun stopped shining in those now lonely, lonely times.

I have to agree with the less enthusiastic posters – this really did nothing for me – it sounded disrespectful, both of Elvis and of the song itself. The PSBs didn’t do much for me overall – I could appreciate/admire what they were doing without actually liking much of it – to my mind Tanya pretty much sussed them, and I can’t help thinking that Tom maybe painted himself into a corner and had to give this a 10, which is quite frankly, a joke. If he’s going to maintain any sort of consistency, there are a hell of a lot of 10s to come (and a hell of a lot of re-rating previous entries)!

(The?) One other highlight from the Elvis 10 year anniversary special was the Blow Monkeys surprisingly sprightly take of “Follow That Dream” – I don’t think they ever recorded it, but maybe one of you knows better?

Thanks MC

@35 it’s quite interesting that since the download chart was incorporated, the two old Xmas records to unfailingly chart highest every year are “Fairytale” and “All I Want For Christmas Is You” – the former actively sets itself up as an “alternative Xmas” but the latter is oddly both trad and non-trad at the same time: it reels off every possible traditional Xmas association, but actually rejects them all; and while it sounds so much like a non-alternative ’60s Xmas standard that most people still think it’s a cover, it’s an original self-penned track that makes as much sense in Mariah’s personal canon.

If Dolce v Ultravox is top of the Premier League of “denied” #1’s, then Pets v Pogues is in the League 2 relegation dogfight area. I don’t recall any major murmurings in ’87 either.

re #39 – agreed, this was a cracking chart battle between two worthy contenders, of which I happened to prefer “Fairytale” – not a “classic v crap” encounter! Looking back to the last week of T’Pau’s reign, that was a battle and a half – Rick Astley’s “When I Fall In Love” in at 2 and Jacko’s “The Way You Make Me Feel” up from 16 to 3, with the PSBs in at four. The Pets won out and then held off all competition in Christmas week.

TOTPWatch: Pet Shop Boys twice performed Always On My Mind on Top Of The Pops;

10 December 1987. Also in the studio that week were; Rick Astley, Johnny Hates Jazz and Alison Moyet. Mike Smith was the host.

25 December 1987. Also in the studio that week were; The Bee Gees, Rick Astley, T’Pau and Johnny Hates Jazz. Mike Smith & Gary Davies were the hosts.

Some of Elvis’s best records stalled at UK #2:
(The wonderfully psychotic/suicidal) Heartbreak Hotel shafted by Pat Boone’s I’ll be home.
(One of the greatest double A-sides) Hound Dog/Don’t be Cruel shafted by Frankie Laine’s A woman in Love

Those are both dolce/ultravox, bunny/pulp -level pop injustices I reckon (Tom scored both of elvis’s nemeses as 2).

Release me holding out PL/SFF isn’t quite as bad as any of these I reckon because Release me doesn’t strike me as completely horrible. I’m not a fan of AOMM but it’s certainly no stinker either. Of course, if you think AOMM is a ’10’ then the FtoNY case may be most analogous to The Beach Boys’ God Only Knows being shut out by Eleanor Rigby.

Hello from a newcomer. I’ve been reading through all the number ones from the start for a couple of weeks, and have finally caught up – and it seems an appropriate moment, as I absolutely loved AOMM at the time. I would have given it a 10 back then – I’ve given it a 9 now, as I now find it a little OTT.