In an effort to expose all of my guilty and not so guilty pleasures, today's Tunes You Need Tuesday features one of my favorite bands, The Pet Shop Boys. If you're not a fan, or if you only know "What Have I Done to Deserve This?" and "West End Girls," maybe after today's post you may download some of their songs to your iPod. I am convinced PSB are the best music to walk or work-out to and they're great to drive to as well, scrapbook to, whatever. Oh, and guess what? I finally figured out how to embed mp3s, so now you can listen to the tunes and read and I don't have to hunt down a YouTube video of the song (although some are quite fun), so here's hoping I actually got it right.
The Pet Shop Boys came on the scene back in 1984-85 and released their first album, Please, in 1986. They were an instant success with "Love Comes Quickly," Opportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money)," and "West End Girls." I remember Please being one of the first records I had to have and I practically burned the thing up listening to it on my turntable. It was divine and very different from a lot of the music going on in the mid-eighties, it was obviously synthesizer-based, but the lyrics were so provocative and unlike the other "dance/pop" music out there. Something that has always stood for me out is Neil Tennant's voice, it's almost other worldly, speech-like, and enunciated unlike any other voice in music that I'm aware of. Chris Lowe is the other half of the PSB, he's the one in sunglasses and a hat in front of the keyboard who rarely speaks. The PSB are the Penn & Teller of electronic music.
I thought I'd attempt to showcase a few PSB tunes you man not be all that familiar with, the first being the cover of Willie Nelson's "Always on my Mind," I know, not immediately what comes to mind when you think of PSB. "Always on my Mind" first appeared on the extended version of Actually and later on 1988's Introspective and rated #2 our of 50 on the list of greatest covers of all time by Britian's Daily Telegraph. That's cool stuff.
http://kerryfaler.typepad.com/files/08-always-on-my-mind-1.m4p
Over the years PSB have released 10 one-word titled studio albums, several compilation albums, and 4 numbered Disco albums of remixes. My hands down favorite PSB album is Behaviour. Their fourth studio album is pretty brilliant with "This Must be the Place I Waited Years to Leave," "Jealousy," and "Being Boring." The latter is one of the best songs I've ever listened to. There is a website devoted to the song with 150 pages of information, lyrics, trivia, and articles written over the past 19 years since the release of Behavior. People seriously love this song, and if I had to write a thesis (which I probably never will, since I'm allergic to college) it would be on "Being Boring." The song is inspired by the words of Zelda Fitzgerald, wife of my man F. Scott and is about a man looking back at his life, reminiscing. Here is "Being Boring" and some of the lyrics I love.
http://kerryfaler.typepad.com/files/14-being-boring.m4p
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.
And because too much is never enough, I thought I'd share "Se a Vide E` (That's the Way Life is)," my favorite feel-good PSB song. It's from the Bilingual album and is pure fun.
http://kerryfaler.typepad.com/files/05-se-a-vide-e-thats-the-way-life.m4a
In case you're wondering where today's title comes from, it's a line from the song "Absolutely Fabulous." The song has bits of lines from the British sitcom Absolutely Fabulous (a great show — if you haven't seen it, hit up YouTube for the outrageousness) and the two main characters say "dahling" and "sweetie" a ton, so it's the bloody Pet Shop Boys, Sweetie. I think I'll start calling people Sweetie for no reason. Why not? So, go download a few PSB songs for your workout — off the top of my head I reccommend "Bet She's Not Your Girlfriend," "I Don't Know What You Want But I Can't Give it Anymore," "Can You Forgive Her," "Yesterday When I Was Mad," and of course "What Have I Done to Deserve This?" and "Suburbia." It's all good stuff to walk or bike to. I once rode 16 miles on the stationary bike to the PSB and lived to tell the tale. That's all there is to the tale, but I lived nontheless. Anydahling, I hope you enjoyed todays tunes. If you have a suggestion for next week, let me know.
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