— Lola Borg
The Pet Shop Boys are back (BACK!) with their second Single of the Fortnight on the bounce. While "What Have I Done to Deserve This?" proved a big hit around the world and probably played a part in their cross-generational appeal, it isn't one of their signature numbers, the type that fans cry out for at concerts to this day. "West End Girls" had not only topped the charts everywhere but it quickly became a firm favourite among fans but there wasn't always this convergence of wide spread popularity and favour with the devoted. The punters may have sent "Heart" to number one but the fans preferred "Left to My Own Devices" which didn't manage to do so well.
Neil Tennant is credited with coming up with the term 'Imperial Phase', about then a singer or group is at the height of their popularity and has "the secret of contemporary pop music". Uniquely, The Beatles had it throughout their entire time as a popular act, Elton John had it through much of the early to mid-seventies and for much of the eighties it was all about the powerful trio of Michael Jackson, Madonna and Prince. For others, the Imperial Phase was much more fleeting. From July of 1987 through to the following summer, the Pet Shop Boys had five hit singles, a best selling album, made a feature film and began contributing songs to other artists. Their North American popularity hadn't yet waned and they were probably the most successful pop act in the world over those twelve months. You don't take a step wrong when you're at the peak of your imperial power — even if It Couldn't Happen Here had been mauled by critics, it said a lot of about their influence and level of success that they were able to have a film made at all.
Their five hit singles from their Imperial period are still well-remembered, and not just by their core audience. Their chart positions were 1, 2, 8, 1 and 1, with "It's a Sin", "Always on My Mind" and "Heart" all hitting the top while "What Have I Done to Deserve This?" would have joined them if not for the colossus of "Never Gonna Give You Up" by Rick Astley, giving them three chart toppers and one near miss. Yet, there in the middle of their imperial phase is that '8' that stands out like a sore thumb. That modest showing only dwarfs what it did in the US, where it failed to chart entirely. It might as well have reached 48. "Rent" would eventually go on to become one of their most popular singles but it was the runt of the litter in their hit singles basket. The album Actually having just come out a month earlier, some fans would have been hesitant to go out and buy it again, especially when they didn't do anything with the song itself aside from trimming it down to three-and-a-half-minutes for optimum airplay. Remixes of "Opportunities" and "Suburbia" a year earlier improved their chart fortunes but the edit of "Rent" wasn't as fortunate. It's kind of remarkable they chose it to be a single at all, as the simple but likable "Heart" was there on Actually's second side, a hit in waiting. The clever "Shopping" also had chart potential, as did "One More Chance". "Rent" is a much less obvious single, similar to the way "Jealousy" would end up as the fourth 7" pulled off of Behaviour: you wouldn't necessarily expect it but you're glad they went ahead with it.
Tom Hibbert called "Rent" a "mercenary love song" and that may be partially why it failed to do better with a wider audience. The song's narrator is, as Tennant has admitted, a kept woman who has been taken care of by her well-off boyfriend. She has a place to live, her expenses are paid for and she's never had to work for a living. She also has sacrificed true happiness for this life and is now resigned to a love that doesn't completely fulfill her. Tennant says he envisioned one of the Kennedys having this secret woman on the side that he has a long-term dalliance with. What we don't get is a sense of closure, as if her life will just go on being largely unhappy with just hints of a true relationship involved. The public doesn't want to have anything to do with such unromantic characters: if they were in a movie, they'd either discover true love with each other (kind of like in Pretty Woman) or she'd free herself of this affair and go it alone (like Muriel's Wedding). A bit of a wasted life, albeit one that is also acknowledged as not being so bad all things considered. The pop charts had no time for such bleak realism, imperial phase or not.
But being a man, I wondered about the other side of this tale. I had originally intended this entry to be a short story set in Jakarta about a young women who grew up in poverty but is now at the beck and call of a rich western businessman. She is able to provide for her mother and sisters and is the envy of her friends but she's grown depressingly resigned to this life. He flies in (I was imaging from either Hong Kong or Singapore) from time to time for business and that's when they can steal their moments together. I worked on this story for a while but hit a wall while trying to flesh out the character of the rich boyfriend. I wanted him to also have a sense that things weren't quite right but it never really rang true. He's the one perpetuating this lifestyle for the two of them so why on Earth would he want to change anything? And if he does want to end it, he has the money and the power in the relationship and he won't be affected long term.
At a time when glitzy American dramas like Dallas and Dynasty were peak (and British telly presented Bread as a comedic, working class answer to those two), few looked beyond the luxury goods and high living. At a time when it was still assumed that Charles and Diana were relatively happy (or perhaps 'weren't entirely unhappy' would be more accurate), many would have traded to have a similar swanky lifestyle. And at a time when Thatcher was busy selling off public utilities (which Tennant and Lowe spoofed in the aforementioned "Shopping") and claiming that there's no such thing as society, the establishment only saw power players and not the human beings lurking underneath. What few dared say was that there's a price for living a glamourous life but only the Pet Shop Boys — in all their imperial power — were there to document it.
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Also Reviewed This Fortnight
INXS: "Need You Tonight"
Groups from the Antipodes traditionally take longer to break in Britain than in the States and this was never truer than in 1987 when INXS began conquering America while still being little known across the Atlantic. Kick was their sixth album and was packed to the brim with potential hits yet they couldn't get themselves arrested in the UK, a country that just so happened to be falling for Neighbours and its generation of young actors and pop stars at the same time. "Need You Tonight" would soon go to number one in the US but it would require another year to really get going in Britain. What took them so bloody long to embrace the sextet? Having a dishy, charismatic frontman in Michael Hutchence wasn't enough, nor was the sexy rock produced by a tight, underrated group of musicians. They probably didn't even care for the state-of-the-art video first time 'round. At the time I was ten years old and rightly assumed that everyone in the world loved INXS. And they did, it just took some longer than others.
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