Pet Shop Boys: "Heart"

23 March 1988

"Unfortunately though, it's the best of a very bad bunch."

— Andy Bell

"I'd rather not pick one for best single — they're all terrible."

— Vince Clarke

So, what was it I was saying about Erasure being a pair of old grumps?

They were a pop group but one that seemed loath to play the pop game. Vince Clarke had already experienced that side of it and perhaps that explains their surprising lack of visibility in the pop mags of the time. Unbelievably, the pair never appeared on the cover of Smash Hits, despite racking up eighteen top ten hits, just three shy of the Pet Shop Boys. The music press reviewed their albums, singles and concerts but never went out of their way to celebrate them. They were a pop group that retained a mystery about them but as a consequence they became everyone's third or fourth or fifth favourite group but not the sort of act that thrilled the kids to pieces. Still, they got snagged for the task reviewing the singles for an issue of ver Hits at the end of March, 1988. Even so, they didn't do their standoffish image any favours by ripping into every single up for consideration. These people may have made pop music but they sure didn't seem to like it.

Their chosen Single of the Fortnight was from a familiar group that fans were passionate about. They were the favourite or second favourite group of a lot of young people in the late eighties. A group that did play the pop game. A group that had already appeared on the cover of Smash Hits on five occasions (including this very issue), with several more to come. Like Erasure, they were a duo with a curiously charismatic frontman and a stern keyboardist. Both groups played synth-pop but the similarities end there. While not exactly a world apart, Pet Shop Boys and Erasure couldn't have been more different. (There was sometimes a bit of a thorny relationship between Pet Shop Boys and Erasure, like a low-key version of the The Cure-Smiths rivalry. Bell once expressed dismay at the favourable treatment Tennant and Lowe tended to get from the press while Tennant didn't seem to respect Bell and Clarke too much. It was never discussed at length on either side and I don't think fans felt the need to back one side at the expense of the other. If there happened to be any ill will by this point, it happily isn't brought up by Erasure here, which is more than can be said for other pop stars who used critiquing the singles as a means to bash their rivals)

They say that following up a debut album is often tricky because an artist or group has a lifetime to draw upon to create that first work but only a few months to then come up with a second. Some, however, have a greater wealth of material to fall back on for a sophomore release. Noel Gallagher had accumulated enough songs over the course of his early-to-mid twenties to fill two LPs and so came the only good albums Oasis ever made, Definitely Maybe and (What's the Story) Morning Glory? Similarly, Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe had been working together for five years before "West End Girls" gave them their first hit single and they had enough tracks to even see spill over to their third, fourth and fifth albums (early composition "It's Not a Crime" would eventually evolve into "Left to My Own Devices", "Jealousy" had been in limbo for nearly a decade before winding up on Behaviour and "To Speak Is a Sin" had been tried out early on only to be abandoned until 1993's Very). Nevertheless, most of the best songs were already earmarked for Please, leaving the swift follow up Actually as a bit more of a pick and mix collection. Tennant has said that it doesn't hang together as well as other albums of their's and it's easy to see why. It's sort of a less-than-the-sum-of-its-parts release with filler ("Hit Music", "I Want to Wake Up" and, yes, "Heart") alongside some of their strongest material with seemingly little thought given to track order — aside from "King's Cross" which had originally been slotted in as the album's opener before they wisely gave it a rethink and tacked it on to the end where it belonged.

Erasure's Andy Bell and Vince Clarke are in agreement with me, if much more avowedly so. I still really like Actually, I just don't think it's as strong as their other peak-period albums (on some days I'll even take later works like Fundamental and Electric over it too); for them, it's clearly a subpar effort following their impressive debut. And, certainly, Please is the better of the two. (Coincidentally or not, they would soon start approaching each album with a purpose. Introspective consisted of half-a-dozen stretched out 12" mixes of potential singles and Behaviour was meant to be a rootsy return utilizing analog synthesizers and being free — for the most part — of samples. They never did concept albums per se but the generic, whatever-is-available attempt at creating an LP would be a one time thing) Actually's first three singles — "It's a Sin", "What Have I Done to Deserve This?" and "Rent" — are superb but their options for a fourth were limited. That cheerful, irony-free love song on the second side would have to do.

Given that they made it their SOTF, you'd think Bell and Clarke would have plenty of praise for "Heart". The singer does make note of Tennant's deadpan vocals being a highlight (even if he undermines it soon after by knocking the "backing track with any old vocals slapped on top") but that's basically it. They don't knock the record as much as the others so there's that too. Otherwise, we've got a very unimpressive SOTF and, as Clarke states in the quotation above, it's a wonder why they even bothered.

I understand Erasure's take on "Heart" but I still can't get fully on board with them. Much as I kind of want to say otherwise, it's a plenty good enough pop song by any standard. That said, the standards of Tennant and Lowe were already high enough that "Heart" doesn't quite match up. The singer has admitted that it was a "one-off" for the group and they famously wanted to give it to Madonna before losing the nerve and deciding to record it themselves. Spruced up with a remix, the single version has a little more pop to it, a rare instance (along with "Suburbia") of a PSB single being superior to its album version. I would never consider it to be one of my favourites of their's and I don't think I'd miss it if it was somehow expunged from their catalog but try telling me that when I'm happily singing along with it. They didn't play it when I went to see them but I wouldn't have complained if they had,

Helped along by an outstanding video, "Heart" went to number one just as Bell predicted. While "West End Girls" was like nothing that had come before it and both "It's a Sin" and "Always on My Mind" were epic singles that couldn't not have topped the charts, the group's final number one is relatively characterless in comparison. But that's the thing with having an imperial period: even the so-so stuff manages to connect with people. This is something that happened to The Beatles with "I Feel Fine" and "Hello Goodbye", Blondie with "The Tide Is High", ABBA with "The Name of the Game" and "Super Trouper", Madonna with "Who's That Girl?": it's one thing to top the charts with a magnificent single but quite another to do so with something that's just sort of all right.

The end of an imperial period may coincide with a group's demise (see both ABBA and Blondie) but some are able to shrug off the sudden lack of guaranteed magahits in order to reach a creative peak. This would be where the Pet Shop Boys would be headed once this nice, inconsequential love song had been done and dusted. It won't be long before they're back (BACK!) on this blog. As for Erasure, they too will soon be back (BACK!) with something of a "Heart" of their own.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

a-ha: "Stay on These Roads"

While Erasure have little good to say about "Heart", they save their best jabs for other singles on offer this fortnight. Not unlike the Pet Shop Boys, Bell and Clarke used to like a lot of a-ha's stuff but they're super underwhelmed by their latest offering. I am happy to say that I strongly disagree. "Stay on These Roads" is one of a-ha's finest singles, a power ballad with some eerie Norse angst at its heart. Sure, Bell's correct that it's nigh on impossible to understand anything Morten Harket is singing about but that's nothing new. They're quick to dismiss the trio's move towards a more "serious and credible" side but this is hardly a nineties pop group going through a miserable R&B phase; "Stay on These Roads" is a hybrid: part stadium rock anthem (Clarke admits that he can imagine it being sung at a football match), part Blue Nile-esque sophisti-pop gem, part drippy love song for teens to awkwardly sway to at a high school dance. So very eighties, yet so very timeless. With all due respect to the Pet Shops, this is the rightful SOTF.

Pete Shelley: "On Your Own"

4 June 1986

"Not surprising, coming from someone who, since his days with The Buzzcocks, has written more brilliant songs and influenced more people than...well, than someone else who's written tons of brilliant songs and influenced loads of people."

— Vici MacDonald

"Pete Shelley swaps his usual easy nonchalance for a vaguely menacing electronic growl on this rather sad and lonely little song which contrasts the satisfaction of being in control with the uncertainties of being alone."
— Ian Cranna

Two quotes from Smash Hits staff? What, did they tag team the singles this time round? No, only the comment at the top comes from the June 4 issue of ver Hits while the one below it is from a month earlier. Former Buzzcock (there's no definite article though if people can go on about 'Beatles', 'Who' and 'Jam' then there's no reason we can't say 'The Eagles', 'The Talking Heads' and, yes, 'The Buzzcocks) Pete Shelley's latest record was reviewed twice during this time. This oversight may be due to a delay in the release of the single, editorial carelessness or Vici MacDonald wanting to build up a recent favourite over some pretty so-so (at least in her judgment) new releases. Given how much she admires Shelley as well as her feeling that he hasn't received his due ("Fact: Pete Shelley is a genius and it's a crime that he seems doomed to obscurity"), I wouldn't be surprised to discover that it's the latter.

Having two reviews to go on is nice. The thoughts of MacDonald and Ian Cranna diverge considerably even though they both appreciate "On Your Own". He considers it to be "unsettling" while she reckons it's "joyous" — and they're both right. There's a barely concealed dark heart to the song but the clipped new wave sound makes it seem less weighty. It's catchy but no less spooky. Borrowing big eighties production, a touch of synth-pop and even a bit of goth rock, it would seem to be very much a product of its time but for all these cliches of the eighties being delicately threaded together so they become tough to pick out. Shelley is so subtle that you'd never know he'd previously been involved in all that punk nonsense.

The punks were now entering their thirties and this left a lot of them in a bind. Many were enjoying success of late — John Lydon was at the helm of a new lineup at PiL, Mick Jones had formed Big Audio Dynamite, The Damned were at their commercial peak, Feargal Sharkey was doing well after leaving The Undertones, Siouxsie Sioux was still going strong with The Banshees and even former Generation X chums Sir Billiam of Idol and Tony James (of Sigue Sigue Sputnik) were having hit singles; the bulk of these acts were also getting Singles of the Fortnight so they had at least some critical support — but they weren't the youthful figures they'd been a decade earlier. Calling Bill Grundy a "dirty bastard" (among other niceties) may have been excusable when they were twenty (and because it was true) but now? Could these people still shock like they once did so effortlessly? Wouldn't it be embarrassing if they even tried?

Those who left their punk pasts behind came out of it better. Once The Clash had ditched Jones they went on to release the disastrous Cut the Crap in which Strummer, Simonon and Tory Crimes decided to rehash what they did when they were younger — only much crappier. Their spurned guitarist and creative force, however, went on to form a new group that made his old bandmates look ever sillier. Lydon continued to be the outspoken loudmouth that comes so naturally to him but he was utilizing funk, jazz and rock musicians to galvanize his hit and miss material. Pete Shelley kicked off his solo career by dabbling in some Numan-esque synth recordings, which did garner criticism, but what he always had was his songwriting talent to keep him afloat. It's just a shame that so few were listening by this time.

Shelley had departed Buzzcocks back in 1981 just as work on a fourth album was going off the rails. While his contemporaries were getting a second wind on the charts, he struggled, with the single "Homosapien" doing well in some Commonwealth countries but without much else to show for it. It's here that his relation to "On Your Own" must be discussed and speculated upon. Had it been a sizable hit Shelley would have been questioned about the song and if it happened to be about himself — and, failing that, who else it might have been about. His band didn't appear to have had that acrimonious a split and they'd reform by the end of the decade. Nevertheless, it's reasonable to assume that this is an account of his own solo career. Buzzcocks were a tight four piece, especially by punk standards, but it was his songs that made them special. Since he was already doing the bulk of the heavy lifting, why not go solo and enjoy the spoils further? But now he's on his own and the spoils are awfully thin. He has the creative final say that he has longed for but at the price of no more group camaraderie.

Pete Shelley passed away in his adopted hometown of Tallin, Estonia back in December of 2018. News of his death may have paled in comparison with David Bowie or Prince (both also reviewed this fortnight, as is a new release from Strange Cruise led by the late Steve Strange of Visage; the Grim Reaper has paid a visit to an awful lot of the pop stars here) but it garnered headlines in the music press and was much-discussed on social media. MacDonald is worried that few appreciate Shelley's talents but it seems people did come round to him in time. Now, that was almost entirely down to what he did with the Buzzcocks but there may have been some residual respect for his solo work. He never tried to cling to punk but didn't seem interested in latching himself onto a trendier genre either. All he could do was be Pete Shelley: to hell with people not getting him.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

a-ha: "Hunting High and Low"

1986 was a-ha's year: not only did "Take on Me" conquer the world but they also enjoyed further Top Ten success and Morten Harket had supplanted all the members of Duran Duran combined as the discerning teenage girl's pin up of choice. The law of diminishing returns did little to derail this souped up title track from their debut LP but it was just more of the same only not as good as their first two hits (though, as MacDonald says, it's a marked improvement on its predecessor "Train of Thought"). An early stab at a more dramatic sound that would be developed into singles such as "The Living Daylights" and "Stay on These Roads", "Hunting High and Low" indicates that there was a lot more to a-ha than cute videos and handsome Norsemen.