The Pet Shop Boys’ last and most unexpected Number One is also their most stripped-down, in texture and mood – “Heart” is a synthpop love song of uncomplicated devotion. They wrote it for Madonna, apparently, but never offered it to her. Understandably, you might think – there’s not very much to play with here, little of the edge or contradiction Madonna laces her material with. But it might easily have worked for one of italo disco’s sweetly blank divas, or one of the colder modern students of pop, a Sally Shapiro or an Annie maybe.
I think ‘affectless’ would suit “Heart” better than ‘sincere’ – it would get the singing out of the music’s way, and the music on “Heart” is enormously enjoyable, syndrums and all. While “It’s A Sin” and “Always On My Mind” took the full-on approach, “Heart” only hints at the epic, dropping string snatches, guitar strums and chopped vocal samples in and out discreetly over its metronome disco. It’s a preview in clockwork miniature of the more expansive long-form approach the group would take on the superb Introspective, not a drum machine or keyboard out of place.
But as a song? “Heart”‘s problem is that it is a simple record – attractively so – but its delivery misleads you away from that. When PSB are in overload or sentimental mode Neil Tennant’s vocals are an anchor: here though he walks you through the song drily, spelling everything out. He sounds clever, which makes you think the song must be clever too: that there has to be some hidden side or twist to “Heart”. And of course there isn’t, which makes its simplicity feel – unfairly – like a cheat or a letdown, and makes “Heart” seem slighter than it might have been.
Score: 7
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Terrific video though
They opened with this at Primavera Sound on Saturday night and it was predictably fabulous although I think I’d rather they’d opened with ‘Suburbia’ and done this halfway through.
I enjoy Heart a lot more than It’s A Sin, partly because I was and remain fairly uninterested in the story behind both songs (one can surmise that IAS is more ‘important’ on this basis). The jumpy strings and pumpy syndrums here convey pure giddy release, as well as any seminal electronic disco anthem before. Perhaps also they convey the sensation of the Boys enjoying their status as chart Kings and as in love with Pop as anyone could be – unlike many pop icons having a closer relationship to the development and execution of their sound, a big factor in my own relationship with them if not the biggest. It’s “just” a love song but like all of their singles between WEG and – well I don’t really get on with Was It Worth It? personally so I’ll say there – it’s a terrific thrill-packed event so I’d go one higher.
I’ve seen the PSBs several times and they rarely (I originally put ‘never’ then saw Steve’s comment) do this live, which suggests that they share your opinion. Still, as you’ve written elsewhere, they were in a period when they could do now wrong, and while I could probably live without this, it still actually feels like a deserved number one.
Hahah I was about to say, surely the video makes it all worth it.
I’ve been trying to figure out why “Always on My Mind” is so terrible (and sorry, but it’s really, really terrible) and I’ve concluded that it’s because the Pet Shop Boys are simply a minor-key band and that they don’t have the strength or the pull for soaring melodies. But give them something that has a darker shadow over it and they pull it off righteously. Was unfamiliar with this one but actually really like it a lot.
i much prefer this to the PSBs two previous number 1s. They appear to have picked up some of the rolling momentum of House in the music which, to my ears, is a refreshing change from the more song based structure of IAS and AOMM. There are still touches of disco in the synth drum and ZTT in the keyboard flourishes but nothing is given too great an emphasis but instead serves the pulse of the track.
I remember when PSB sat in for a Radio 1 DJ in 1991 and would devote part of each show to a long mix of House tracks where each song flowed into the next and it’s that flow which I respond to positively here.
No chart action in the U.S. for this. Song is okay, but like someone already posted, video is better.
This is my favourite of theirs, ‘West End Girls’ possibly excepted. I’ve never thought of it as slight, just simply appropriate, and to me it stands up perfectly. There’s a decent amount going on here as well, I especially like the glittery funk guitar which dips in and out from time to time. I agree with no.5 too, I’m a sucker for the minor key and it suits them well. I also love its positioning on Actually, it seems to make the album take flight and soar, before the resolution in ‘King’s Cross’.
Mel Hutchwright strikes again.
I was very disappointed with the single because i’d been listening to the album version for so long. It’s not an attitude i hold or even understand these days, so I can’t fully explain it. I remember thinking the extra syndrums seemed so superfluous and irreverent — the sound reminded me of Pigeon Street. I felt somehow slighted that it was so succesful — that it belittled the earlier greater stuff. (and hadn’t WHIDTDT been and gone and outrageously barely bothered the top 10?*)
There’s a vestige of this feeling today — I still much prefer the barer album version — but I’m more prepared to enjoy the slightness and fluff now.
* edit update: ok so it was like 8 months earlier and got to #2. Still it huuuurt *pounds fist to chest*
Is this the first fourth single off an album to get to number one? Its the excellence of the video, combined with the Pet Shop Boys ubiquity at the time – thanks to the run of hits, Brit Awards, etc, many more people who didn’t follow pop were aware of them by Spring 1988 than would have been in Summer 1987 – that led to this doing quite so surprisingly well.
But its a winning song in its own right – the lack of irony or bittersweet subtext makes it appropriate for holding a near-universal appeal. Fourth form reaction was a bit muted though, as any of us who were likely to approve had had the album for months already.
Such subcultural kick as Heart had at the time came from the casting of Ian McKellen in the video, who had just outed himself in reaction to the fraught atmosphere created by that unpleasant piece of Thatcher legislation, Clause 28.
Re 10: Worst “single version” of a great song that everyone already knew off the album ever – Disco 2000?
“Heart” is the poppiest and simplest song that the PSB’s got to #1. The video is gorgeous with Ian Mckellen’s hammy vampire stealing the show, echoing the sentiment of a heart that stopped beating long ago. It’s minor key melodrama yes, but with a knowing smile. You’re invited to take it at face value, but we know this is pastiche. Those “Aah-ah” moments almost feel like stifled giggles “everytime”. This then is a song about romance at it’s most ridiculous. Love is way too complex and difficult to nail down with something as airy as “Heart”. Neil knows this, so he delivers us a sugar-coated dream with a sour centre. Tangfastic.
#12 the clear winner here for me is the single edit of The Orb’s “Perpetual Dawn” with the friendly hippie bloops sidelined in favour of a Bodyform lady going “Perpetual DAWWWWWN… infinite SUNRISE”
Number Two Watch: A week for Climie Fisher’s ‘Love Changes Everything’. I rather like that one. LOVE CHANGES! CHANGES EVERYTHING! Do Do Der Do Do!
Perhaps I’m just easily pleased.
TOTPWatch: Pet Shop Boys twice performed Heart on Top Of The Pops. I’ll tell you about the Christmas show in the fullness of time;
7 April 1988: Also in the studio that week were; Taylor Dayne, Glen Goldsmith, Hazell Dean and Scott Fitzgerald (performing number 52 smash ‘Go’. I don’t remember that one. It must have been a quiet week). Gary davies & Simon Mayo were the hosts.
Re 16: Oh, of course – ‘Go’ was 1988’s UK Eurovision entry, hence getting onto TOTP despite its lowly chart placing. I still don’t remember it, despite its runner-up position – just one point behind the winner in a nailbiting contest.
That winner being Switzerland’s Celine Dion. I wonder what became of her?
Intrigued by the idea that it “sounds clever, which makes you think the song must be clever too”. To me, Always On My Mind was cold as ice, a camp gag, hugely enjoyable but check out the one-note synth solo mocking Elvis’s red-blooded guitar break. Heart was – as MBI ponts out at at no.5 – minor key, which is where PSB are at their most extraordinary. The syndrums were superfluous, as if they felt obliged to add a glued-on raised eyebrow for the single mix, embarrassed to be so emotionally naive (re 13, I don’t agree at all. Maybe the clue to Heart’s honesty is pretty much every open-heart-surgery lyric – To Face The Truth, Jealousy, So Hard – on their next album, the reality biting after the honeymoon of Heart).
They didn’t need to cut a manifesto like Left To My Own Devices every time they recorded an A-side. Heart’s simplicity (the title alone!), lyrical and melodic clarity, and lack of any wise-ass baggage makes it my favourite of their no.1s.
Re 15
“Love makes you fly, it can break your wings
love changes, changes everything
love makes the rules, from fools to kings”
Billy, sorry but you’re right, you’re easily pleased. Worse than King! FULL MID-EIGHTIES REGALIA!!
This song is pretty dire: boring/bad lyrics (read them sometime – honestly, SAW would be ashamed), listless, formulaic melody, completely lazy arrangement (which manages to get less and less distinguished as it goes along), etc.. Heart makes ‘Who’s that girl?’ – a 5 if ever there was one – look accomplished and inventive, therefore it has to get a 3 or a 4 I reckon.
#11 No Billy – I think “Don’t You Want Me ” takes that honour. And as I pointed out at the time “La Isla Bonita” was the 5th release from “True Blue”. That this one out-performed “Rent” by some distance is baffling.
This of course was the Boy’s 4th chart topper in little over a year but there were no more. Why ? It’s very tempting to project my own boredom with synth pop around this time onto the general populace but I think it’s more likely simple over-exposure. Eightth Wonder (great as that was), Liza, Dusty, Electronic, the mini-albums, the film , they just spread the jam too thin. By the time of “Being Boring” people were saying “never a truer word “. Sorry Tom.
Originally written with Hazell Dean in mind, before they thought better of pitching it to Madonna – since singing a song such as “Heart” requires a heart – “Heart” was Actually‘s equivalent of “Love Comes Quickly” on Please and “Being Boring” on Behaviour; the moment where the Pet Shop Boys drop the irony, the metaphors and the double or triple bluffs and sing their feelings straight and unfiltered. Just as Bowie’s Low would have been unbearable without its emotional centre of “Be My Wife” – the point where Bowie comes out of his Thomas Jerome Newton cape and tearfully opens up his soul – so does the Pet Shop Boys’ essential humanity (though never in doubt) become especially clear when Tennant sings about the simple joys of falling in love, or reminisces about his past (and how right it was that the most determinedly futurist of pop groups should be responsible for the greatest pop song on the subject of looking back).
Neither “Love Comes Quickly” nor “Being Boring” did all that well as singles, but devout PSB fans knew their true value. “Heart,” however, became their fourth British number one, which seemed to take everyone, including the PSBs, by surprise since it was the fourth single from Actually (not counting “Always On My Mind”) and nothing much was expected of it other than keeping album sales buoyant. However, when compared to the sawtooth clinical neutrality of much of what else passed as mainstream pop in 1988, “Heart” has elegance in its patiently excited beats, supreme architecture – that little pause for breath at the end before the final fade – and a natural authority to its honesty. Tennant requires no melismatic pyrotechnics to express his passion; his voice is exquisitely tender on such lines as “You don’t know what it is to be with you” (an echo of “If I was you, I wouldn’t treat me the way you do you” from “I’m Not Scared”) or “Can you feel it too?”
Though the song itself is decidedly unironic, its sales were aided by the nicely turned irony of the video, which starred Ian McKellen as a vampire and ended with the artful role reversal of Tennant turning into stone and Lowe getting to drive off with the girl. “Heart”‘s success re-emphasised the magic which the Pet Shop Boys were repeatedly capable of bringing to pop, and although they have yet to achieve their fifth UK number one single, supreme achievements were to follow in “Heart”‘s wake; Patsy Kensit and Eighth Wonder went top ten shortly afterwards with the aforementioned, astonishing “I’m Not Scared,” a love song set in the 1968 Paris riots and the nearest thing imaginable to Petula Clark singing Joy Division; the duo finally collided with Trevor Horn on the brilliant “Left To My Own Devices,” their own “A Day In The Life” complete with opulent, “Look Of Love”-quoting orchestration; 1990’s Behaviour, their masterpiece; 1993’s Very with its epochal resurrecting of “Go West.” Wise, gentle, profound and playful, the Pet Shop Boys are the unsullied, vital heart of punctum pop. “I’m in love with you…I mean what I say.” As though we could ever doubt them.
My favourite of the four PSB number ones. Nothing much to add here except that Heart, for me, is one of the great Spring pop records. I love the syn drums, the false ending and the whole feeling of upward, onward motion it has. I always tend to dig it out and play it on the first few sunny days of March.
And I love I’m Not Scared too. I had no idea it was set in May 1968.
Re: 21. I’m not sure the jam/spread/thin idea holds up, as IIRC, none of those side-projects had much of an impact. I think a general, single-buying populace would struggle to remember now that the Pet Shop Boys made a film or recorded with the blokes out of New Order and the Smiths. I suspect the later, Behaviour-era, work just wasn’t as chart friendly. I certainly remember being disappointed with that album and its singles initially and suspect a lot of people who bought Heart did too.
Being a hardline PSB fan myself I should love this and whilst it is on the ipod with about 20 other PSB songs it is a bit dull compared to the other works of genius they created.even chris lowe said he wasnt a great fan of it.
Its ok but not worthy of “its a sin” acclaim and is probably the weakest of the “imperial phase” run.then again this is the PSB so its not necessarily a bad thing either.
Its not a song that has not been played on the radio much either.
Could stretch to a 7 depending on the mood but as it stands now 6.
I never understood the love for this at the time, and listening again, I’m still left cold by it now. I think it’s Neal’s voice that does it – on most of his songs it’s one of the things I like most, but here it seems to work against the lyrics, I just don’t feel like his heart is really in it – and for a song with these lyrics, that makes all the difference. I’m a huge PSB fan but this is no better than a 4 for me, and you’d have to go nearly a decade ahead to get to another PSB single I like as little (both Se a Vida E & Single-Bilingual)
I love this song – one of my favourite PSB tracks, and I think its simplicity and total lack of subtext work in its favour. It’s bracing: Tennant was very good at being clever, at playing with language and meaning, and as anyone who’s good at being clever knows, that can get a bit too cosy, too much of a comfort zone, a way to trap yourself in this perpetual cycle of avoiding the issue. So “Heart” just slices through all of that with this direct, no nonsense, no bullshit song that looks you dead in the eyes and doesn’t blink and says – “I’m in love with you – I mean what I say, I’m in love with you.” And it’s not as clever or unpackable as your more typical PSB songs, but it’s braver in some ways. Helps that the beat’s pretty physical and no-nonsense, too.
At the time, I was deeply disappointed that this was the fourth and final single from “Actually” rather than “King’s Cross”. In retrospect, of course, I can hear that “King’s Cross” wouldn’t have worked as a single at all, but maybe somewhere, in a parallel universe…
I must admit that I’ve always been comparatively indifferent to “Heart”. It sits well on the album, but was never a particular highlight for me, and I was absolutely stunned when this reached number one. I can’t put my finger on exactly what the problem is, but something sounds slightly cold and hollow – almost as if they were tempted to do more with the song, but deliberately held back in order to achieve pop simplicity. It sounds very tight, very reigned in, and slightly self-conscious.
Still, a slightly below par PSB number one is still better than most, and it would be hard to bicker with the 7 rating. I might lean more towards a 6 if in a grumpy mood, but the sun’s out, so…
I quite liked Heart on the album but I absolutely hated it as a single, due to the video. There is something ridiculously mannered about the whole affair which for some reason I reacted terribly against. The false ending is also fantastically irritating in that version. Even now I can’t bring myself to watch it, it truly is my kryptonite.
@22, Punctum. “Love Comes Quickly” (good arrangement and vocal) and “Being Boring” (good lyrics/ideas) are superior, maybe even superb records. Heart seems like a (patiently excited – haw haw) non-entity by comparison.
And I dare say that Low is quite bearable/listenable without ‘Be my wife’. I’ve always found that the album plays better without that track, i.e., as quasi-instrumental/ambient after ‘Sound and vision’, and so normally skip over it.
Surprisingly (to me anyway), I could not recall this at all until I youtubed it. I’m not much of a PSBs fan, and do think there is something of the “emperor’s new clothes” about them, this being demonstrated in many of the comments on all their popular entries.
Some people see something special in them which is quite invisible to many others. That doesn’t mean it’s there, or that it isn’t; and I’m not making any strong categorical claim, just giving my opinion.
I just don’t get it – this is bland; the vocals are dull and uninspiring; and it SOUNDS like the fourth single off an album.
Tom’s piece reads like he was preparing to award a 4 or a 5, as he didn’t seem to particularly like the song. It certainly doesn’t read like a 7, so I presume the 7 is more for the PSBs than for the song itself.
#30:
Para 1: It’s not a competition.
Para 2: You also skip past “Within You, Without You” on Sgt Pepper, right?
#31 I headed into it thinking “6” then was reminded how much I like the arrangement (whoever said ‘more housey’ puts it better than I did though).
As a huge PSB fan at the time I was delighted this reached number one but it did rather feel like they were treading water with this release. Still, it’s a likeable song with a nice silvery shimmer to it.
This is dishwater-dull, with the jerky sub-Axel F synth riff a particular lowlight, although Tennant’s tuneless and uniquely cloying voice takes some beating in that regard.
I think, having read the comments (many from commentators whos’ opinions and reviews I enjoy reading) on the PSB’s 4 number one singles on Popular, that they may well be the single most overrated pop group of all time.
I don’t get the remarks that they dropped their guard here or that the song boasts a “lack of subtext.” The stuttered, sampled vocal (AH-AH-AH-AH) sounds like counterpoint to what on paper DOES look like lyrics without subtext; Tennant’s having fun with the idea of being in love (which is not to say he isn’t in love; as with so many PSB songs he’s both observed and observer). And the slightly wistful way in which Tennant’s voice ascends when he sings, “I MEAN what I say I’m in LOVE WITH YOU” gives the next line (“You don’t know what it means to be with you”) an extra layer of meaning: is he complaining or boasting?
I’ve learned to love this over the years. On Actually this is a throwaway, but the single remix is an 8 or 9. Where it really works is between “Always On My Mind” and “Domino Dancing” on Discography. Apart from the awesomeness of the sequence, you can see a narrative: he’s comfortable enough with his lover to smirk through the relationship…until the doubt starts to creep in.
Album Track Skippers! Oooh I’d…grr they make me SO ANNOYED…(which is mildly annoyed really in the greater scheme of things) but if I’m listening to an album, I will be patient with the less loved tracks knowing that something better is coming up. If an album was put together to be listened as a whole, then it’s worth listening to as a whole. Granted, I own some albums where there are only a couple of “good” tracks on there, but then I play them rarely. I have an mp3 playlist of “good” album tracks, but at least I won’t be skipping them!
Whereas a certain young lady (daughter aged 22) who occasionally will get a lift from me, will be itching to press the skip button on my car stereo if there’s a song she:
a) doesn’t like
b) doesn’t know
c) knows it preceeds a favoured track.
Failing that, she’ll bring her own mix CD which she also skips merrily through! AAARRRGGGHHHH!!!
rant over
B-side Alert: “I Get Excited (You Get Excited Too)” is one of their best.
Re 35: which comments suggest they are over rated? There’s a lot of PSB love on here, some qualified, almost all rational (I think Tom might be the biggest fan of all), and they’ve generated some healthy hearty argument. All for the good.
I loved them at this point – the ‘Che Guevara and Debussy to a disco beat’ line on Left To My Own devices explains why – and delivered with such deadpan applomb! I thought it was a potential career ending 45 (as in it couldn’t be bettered), and then they gave us the emotional Behaviour which I dug out on a recent West Country motoring holiday. It’s sadder than I remembered, more streamlined than its predecessors which both sound a little thin and clattery to me in 2010, and entirely unironic. The backward step of Very was a big disappointment, and (as they happily admitted) recorded to appease people who didn’t like Behaviour. Bah. That broke the spell for me.
This is the first song Number One we’ve reached that I never realised had got to Number 1 or even heard of before (the first since about mid-1972 when I became conscious of the charts anyway).
I gave it a listen on Youtube and may have vaguely heard it before but that’s about it.
I’m really surprised that this has happened as early as 1988.I thought it would have happened for me sometime in the early 1990s.
The end of the ‘Imperial Phase’, has Tennant would have it. Their following release is probably my favorite PSB single as well.
@punctum, fatgit. On skipping tracks… ‘Within you without you’ is great, but, for example, I skip over ‘Sloop John B’ on Pet Sounds, I’m sure I’ve only listened to the White Album from beginning to end once or twice (otherwise editing the experience just as has everyone else I’ve ever known), and I never knew *anyone* to play the duet with McCartney ‘The Girl is Mine’ on Thriller beyond a first listen. And let’s not even get started on the truly sprawling cds that seem completely misguided if you *don’t* end-edit them, e.g., Janet Jackson’s albums full of irritating inter-song chit-chat, Magnetic Fields and Sixths records full of noodles designed to test your patience, ruin your dinner party (haw haw!), etc..
I’d guess off-hand that not 1 in 20 of the records I really like reaches such a pitch of excellence and integrity that it absolutely demands a beginning-to-end experience (often even a really good artist will only have one album that’s like that, e.g. Correct use of Soap, Second Toughest in the Infants are the only magazine and underworld records that are that way – I find their other successes are more qualified).
I agree, however, that Low *is* an ideal candidate for top-tier treatment. It’s at least a near masterpiece, we’re all agreed. It’s no arbitrary collection of songs, rather there are real over-arching ideas being explored in it.
I mentioned my skip policy in Low’s case because I knew that it was slightly heretical, and because my experience seemed to conflict with Punctum’s original claim that Low-‘be my wife’ would be unbearable. I’m a Low true-believer, but the album has never flowed together ideally for me: rather ‘Be My wife’ has always sounded out of place, and it ends up being easiest just to omit it. I’m of course very happy if other people can get the whole of Low to gel optimally.
Lastly, at least in the cd release I have, Prince’s Lovesexy (w/ alphabet st on it) is sealed in a single track. This is incredibly irritating (it’s no Sgt Pepper or Off the Wall or Correct use of Soap that’s for sure). Do you guys seriously wish that this was the normal format?
I sit through “The Girl Is Mine” more often than not when I play Thriller – I’m not really sure WHY, I don’t like it any better than anyone else I’m sure, but it definitely seems part of the package.
(I’m a big “Sloop John B” fan too, TBH I find the introspective intensity of Pet Sounds rather suffocating anyway and it breaks the mood nicely.)
But in general I’m a track based listener not an album based one.
The single track album thing came to mind when Pink Floyd sued EMI earlier this year to not sell their tracks individually – I remember thinking, look, if it’s THAT important why separate the tracks out?
Sloop John B was tacked on by Capitol as you probably know, but I agree with you Tom.
I can sit through David Crosby’s pompous beyond parody Mind Gardens on the Byrds’ Younger Than Yesterday which makes The Girl Is Mine seem like an absolute pleasure (actually I really don’t mind TGIM, but it sure doesn’t belong on Thriller).
The tracks vs album thing surely depends on whether you grew up in the vinyl era.
I bloody love this, and would even go as far to say it stands up better than AOMM and IAS now. To me the fact this seems devoid of the usual archness makes it all the more sincere, especially on the album, as it follows the wonderful ‘I Want To Wake Up’ which is similar in it’s uncharacteristic sentimentality. The passage beginning with ‘Every time I feel your heartbeat next to me’ with its drama chords still gets me.
The 12” of this is a good ‘un, two 12” versions with the ‘Disco Mix’ on the A side a straight extended version of the single mix, with a long instrumental passage as the intro and more of J J Belles guitarage. The B is the ‘Dance Mix’, which being mixed by Shep Pettibone has more of a New York feel, a nice subtle piano riff and an electro-type breakdown halfway through. The 12” remix version (do try and keep up) is a little stranger, a long, dubby workout with all kinds of strange industrial noises that yeah, kind of doesn’t really suit. Another nice dub from Shep Pettibone on the flip though.
Anyone else remember the separate Neil and Chris sleeves for the 7” and 12”? This was the first time I’d been aware of this particular marketing ploy (I know Bros later did a similar thing with a few of theirs). Bought the 12” with Neil sleeve, and as the artwork was so wonderful, was also going to buy the Chris sleeve on 7” but was forbidden by my dad (probably for the best).
I also had huge promo posters for this, one of Neil and one of Chris, gawd knows where they are now (with my tattered ‘It Couldn’t Happen Here’ poster from the video shop no doubt). Shame, they’d look great framed and on the wall now!
Tom, I remember that Floyd vs EMI thing. The media picked it up as some kind of “death of the concept album” argument. And there are certain albums that narrate in a linear fashion, the most obvious example is “War Of The Worlds”. That was a household favourite when I was younger. “Forever Autumn” was released as a single and did quite well in the charts IIRC, but that track made more sense in it’s album setting, with Richard Burton narrating over the instrumental break.
Wichita’s point about growing up in the vinyl era also reminds me of when I bought Genesis’ “Lamb Lies Down On Broadway”, which also has a linear narrative. I was devastated that my copy had a tiny scratch that forced the needle to jump halfway through “Back In NYC”. I took the album back to the shop and asked for another copy. When I got back home, I eagerly played it through again only to find that the needle jumped at that EXACT SAME SPOT! Bastards!
#42: The importance of “Be My Wife” in the context of Low is precisely that it does break the flow, sound out of place and jarring because all of a sudden, in the midst of an album where the protagonist is essentially hiding from himself and the world (in that order) and eventually absents himself from the world (and the album, and recognisable language) altogether – and here is the source of his pain; it abruptly explodes with trembling vulnerability. Here, if only for a second (or, if you must, “only one day”), Bowie drops the masks and the mud and stares us straight in the face; this is what has made me what I am (/not). I find it intensely moving.
Certainly the “forgotten” PSB Number One, and one which they have only lately started including in their live set; I’ve seen them many times, and have only witnessed them performing it once, on what I think was their last UK tour. Its exclusion always frustrated me, as I’ve always been more than fond of “Heart”. Musically, I like its clean lines, its economy, its smooth, seamless flow, but also its sense of giddy impatience: that panting vocal sample, that overall sense of blood rushing to the head, in the first flush of a new infatuation. And conceptually, I was ready for a relatively straightforward love song, after such a run of Big Events. The syndrum-laden 12″ filled my floor, it was spring, all was well with the world.
i’d never thought of ‘be my wife’ as a particular outlier either way, but i will confess, to my deep shame, that i have never once played the second side of ‘low’. the downside of vinyl. (likewise it was years before i ever really played ‘sad eyed lady of the lowlands). not just ‘sloop john b’, i’m surely the only person in the world who actively looks forward to the apparently universally hated ‘student demonstration time’. i have just never been able to hear it as anything other than energetic, passionate and engaged. okay, slightly clumsy and outsiderish, but that’s always been part of the charm of the beach boys, even in their surfing days.
anyway, listening to a whole album with rapt attention (following lou reed’s stern instructions on ‘new york’) is one of those things that feels like it’s good for you and really does have its particular rewards. i’m just not sure that in a world where you can get anything ever made instantly and for free, the opportunity cost of ploughing through album tracks repeatedly until you like them is always worth it any longer. for anyone with truly hardline view on the matter, i have these words: Wu…..Tang……Forever. eat up that poppa wu folks!
i’m edging towards liking ‘heart’ more and more. i love the way neil’s singing suggests a real weight and backstory behind the simple words and i love the urgency of the string snatches.
I grew up with cassettes, and so used to listen to albums in their entirety, which I loved at the time – for quite often a song that I didn’t get on first listen would often become a favourite later on as I became more accustomed to its subtleties. These days I just don’t often have the time to listen to one album again and again to give it a chance, which I’m kind of sad about, as I’m sure it means I am missing out on some gems, but on the other hand it gives me time to explore more tracks by more artists so ultimately I think I’m better off.
#42 Lovesexy is bloody annoying like that (and I see that it’s only for sale as a download as a single, 45 minute track for 4.99). But for some reason more recent pressings of the CD do have individual tracks which allows you to get at the good bits more easily.