PET SHOP BOYS – "Heart"

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.

Hahah I was about to say, surely the video makes it all worth it.

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.

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’.

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*

Re 10: Worst “single version” of a great song that everyone already knew off the album ever – Disco 2000?

#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”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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)

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…

@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.

#30:

Para 1: It’s not a competition.

Para 2: You also skip past “Within You, Without You” on Sgt Pepper, right?

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.

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.

B-side Alert: “I Get Excited (You Get Excited Too)” is one of their best.

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.

@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?

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.

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!

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 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.