Pet Shop Boys at dead of night, between the lines

Between the lines

Nightlife

For Your Own Good

Neil: "It's about someone being at home waiting for their loved one to come and see them. Whoever is singing the song is wondering whether the loved one is going to go out and get wrecked or come round. And they're saying: please, come home to me rather than go out. I always imagine that the person singing it is a woman, and that she is singing about her lover. It's a very simple song."
(Literally 21, 1999)

Closer To Heaven

Neil: "'Closer to heaven' is just about a relationship which may or may not develop. It feels like it's developing - you're closer to heaven - but anything could happen; you've never been farther away. It's a love song about how you can almost be there, without getting there. The close you get to it, the more you realise it's not going to happen. Having called it 'Closer to heaven' I put in things about horoscopes, and fate; religious and superstitious terms. On the demo version - which you could hear a bit of on our radio documentary About The Pet Shop Boys - we had this speeded-up voice going 'take me high, take me higher', but we decided that was a little bit corny."
(Literally 21, 1999)

I Don't Know What You Want But I Can't Give It Any More

Neil: "It's about the end of a relationship between two people. Where they are no longer communicating. They don't understand each other."
Chris: "It's about someone being a bit demanding. Not doing the washing up and stuff."
(Literally 20, 1999)

Neil: "I'd had this phrase in my little notebook 'I don't know what you want, but I can't give it any more' years ago, a sort of paradox. It's about the end of a love affair; about two people who can't really communicate. What the title says is: I can't give you what you want. The lyric is about someone being unfaithful, and the whole business. It was from my own experience. It originally had a different bit in the song that went 'if anyone can, the Action Man can', but we took it out."
(Literally 21, 1999)

Happiness Is An Option

Neil: "These words, for me, a surprisingly positive approach to life. They are about all sorts of grim experiences, and about not allowing them to bring you completely down and make you totally depressed. You've got to carry on. Happiness is an option. It's an expression of my belief that you can create the circumstances in which you live your life and that we all have control to a certain extent over our own destinies, which is why happiness is an option. Maybe we don't necessarily want happiness, but if we do, it's an option. The first verse is about a strange experience I had in 1974, when I felt I was trapped in my own body - the song goes through bad experiences, and the point is that bad things will happen because of your choices, but you can turn them around. The song is saying that you must never become a victim. The second verse is about a failed relationship - I love that line: 'it was a strange feeling, like a law repealing itself'. Something you've assumed as fact is suddenly no longer there. The line 'I don't think I suit my face' comes from one of Brian Eno's daughters. In his diaries Brian Eno's children are very interesting, the things they say to him, and one morning one of them comes to him - I think it's the youngest one - and she says, 'Daddy, I don't think I can suit my face.' And I thought, 'God, I really know what you mean.' I think it's possible to wake up in the morning feeling completely hung over, and you look in the mirror and this innocent face stares back at you - or the reverse can happen, and this debauched face stares back at you - and sometimes what your face looks like doesn't seem to reflect anything to do with you. I told Brian Eno that I was going to put that in a song and he said to me, 'It's yours.' The line 'this is neither old nor new' comes from the Anna Akhmatova poem of the same name; Anna Akhmatova was a famous Russian poet, the poet of the silver age, and she lived in the back of this palace in St Petersburg and she means a lot to Russians because she survived through all these different periods. I just thought that it was a good line: that you're just saying something that always is."
(Literally 21, 1999)

You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You're Drunk

Neil: "I think it's a sentiment a lot of people can relate to: you only tell me you love me when you're drunk. It's not necessarily a bad thing. I think sometimes it only occurs to some people to say that when their guard is down, when they're drunk. It was inspired by something in my own life years ago. Parts of my brain are normally looking for song ideas at any given time and will pluck things out of an emotional turmoil and sort them away, and this is an example of that. In the song, the person who is singing the song is wondering whether the person the song is about is really in love with them, and whether the fact that they say they love him when they're drunk means that they love him, or that the fact that they say it only when they're drunk means that they don't really mean it. In the song, as in life, the answer is left hanging."
(Literally 21, 1999)

Vampires

Neil: "It's a funny song, this. I always say it's about people exploiting each other, but this song slightly spooks me out because I don't really know what it's about but it all makes sense to me in a weird kind of way. 'Sun in the kitchen / boy, you're still sleeping / When you get hungry / I'll do what you want me to do / you're a vampire / I'm a vampire too' - I find that really creepy. I've no idea why it mentions the kitchen; absolutely no idea. The song's saying that it all doesn't matter - it's only drugs, it's only sex, it's only whatever. A friend of ours goes on about this concept of psychic vampires. A psychic vampire is someone who will suck your ideas out of you and use them for themselves. I thought it was quite an interesting idea. Once, when it was proposed we worked with someone, I was warned that this person was a vampire, in that sense. And I jokingly said, 'Oh, it's okay, I'm a vampire too.' And that was where the idea came from."
(Literally 21, 1999)

Radiophonic

Neil: "This is a classic nightlife concept, this song. It's about someone coming back wrecked from a nightclub and not being able to get to sleep. And they've had a really good time, but they know something's happened, and they can't quite think what it is that they're thinking about, and then they suddenly realise that they think they're in love with someone. And they have a terrible hangover - 'my hands are shaking / my mind is aching / with a feeling deep inside / that you've been staring / sending signals every time our paths collide'. Sometimes you can meet someone that you're really attracted to, and you think they're attracted to you but you don't really know, and you daren't ask them. It's about me lying in bed, the night after meeting someone, thinking 'Why did I think I thought I was getting somewhere? I can't remember'. I thought of the line 'feels like a radiophonic workshop's beaming straight into my head' one day when I was in a taxi with a hangover, and I just thought it was a very musical phrase. The BBC Radiophonic Workshop was the part of the BBC that was famous for making the Dr Who theme tune that I used to love when I was a kid. All those electronically created sounds that took a whole workshop to do that nowadays would take a little keyboard."
(Literally 21, 1999)

The Only One

Neil: "A very romantic song, with a twist. It's about someone who's in love and they're wondering whether the person they're in love with can be trusted. They don't really know the other person's agenda. There are two songs about this on the album, the other being 'Boy strange'. Quite often you know someone who's got a really unsuitable boyfriend. I've known men and women with this through the course of my life - who fall in love with someone who's a criminal or violent. That's what this song's about really: going out with someone you're in love with and wondering whether you can really trust them. What they're up to. What they do for a living. That's why it says 'I don't know much about the deals you make / there's so much that you hide from me / the mystery: am I the only one?' Am I the only person you're seeing? You just simply don't know. You're hoping it's fine. It's about going out with someone who's really sort of an enigma. It's a work of imagination."
(Literally 21, 1999)

Boy Strange

Neil: "The other song about unsuitable boyfriends. It's about someone looking at this boy and thinking how much they fancy them or whatever, and you just know he's trouble. You could say it's about the beginning of an abusive relationship. It's something I've seen many times in my life, though luckily not with myself. When I was 17, one of my best friends, this girl who I used to go out with at one point, went out with this guy and he almost ruined her life. He was a boy strange. He was a nightmare. At the end of the song it says: 'Why would you inflict him on you?'. No one could ever understand why she wanted to be with him, because he just caused her so much trouble. But love is a strange thing. She was in love with him."
(Literally 21, 1999)

In Denial

Neil: "'In denial' is a duet with Kylie Minogue which was written for our musical. It's a most unusual song, this. It's a story about a father and his daughter. The father is gay and his daughter is meeting him for the first time in many many years and it's difficult for them both. She doesn't really approve of his way of life and she's telling him how to sort himself out, with the confidence of youth. He knows his way of life is upside down and - another nightlife kind of thing, another reference to vampires - he says 'my life is absurd / I'm living it upside down / like a vampire, working at night, sleeping all day / a dad with a girl who knows he's gay'. Everything he does is kind of the wrong way round. But he's doing his best. The last line is them both saying 'Can you love me anyway?' So actually it ends up as rather a positive statement."
(Literally 21, 1999)

New York City Boy

Neil: "David Morales said, 'we should do this big disco anthem like the Village People', and I said, 'Oh, alright then, we'll call it "New York City Boy" then.' And then I listened to the Village People's records just to hear how their music sounded. I hadn't listened to them for ages. The song is just about a teenager living in the suburbs of New York - Brooklyn or Queens or Westchester or somewhere like that. He's at home, and he's had exams at school, and it's Saturday morning and he's playing his punk rock records, his Green Day records. And he goes into New York. He wants to get out of doing homework and being at home, and to go out and hang around Times Square and the centre of New York and look at all the girls on the street and look in the shop windows and see all the new computers you can buy and go to a record shop and get the best mix of the hottest new song. And then, when dusk starts to fall, you can feel the pace of the city change. It's a song about how fab New York is. Which I think it is. We had this vocal arranger called Danny Madden who came in and did the vocals on this, and when he heard the track he said, 'That's the bomb! That track is the bomb, guys!', and I liked that phrase so I put it in the song: 'That's the bomb!' There was a great description on the internet explaining the lines 'home is a boot camp / you got to escape / want to go and wander in the tickertape'. Tickertape is what they used to throw out of the windows during celebrations in New York, and this guy explained about how it was about celebration and how I always have lyrics about people wanting to change their lives. And he was exactly right; that's what it means. Actually, I think I just endlessly rewrite the lyrics of 'West End Girls' really. It's just another version of 'West End Girls': it's a kid in a boring suburban house and he wants to go and have some excitement."
(Literally 21, 1999)

Footsteps

Neil: "We were writing a song and this was the best bit of it so we just concentrated on this bit. And then I thought of the line 'as long as I hear your footsteps in the dark, that's all I need', and I sang that just to give us a bit of a focus, and Chris said 'I can imagine people at Wembley singing that.' It's got a slightly anthemic quality; it makes a good end to the album. If you think of the person at the beginning of the album singing 'For your own good, call me tonight', at the end of the album, she's still waiting. It says in the middle of this song, 'I'm longing to see you, I want you, I need you', so the lover hasn't returned. The lover obviously did go clubbing. We've never really used a classical choir, because I've always thought it sounds a bit pretentious, hut I think with this, when I'm singing the line about the pier - 'when loneliness induces fear / like waves against a ramshackle pier' - and the choir are singing behind, it sounds very moving. I think that line's very Michael Stipe. This song reminds me of 'Everybody Hurts'. The song's about a fear of the dark. It's partly about me - the car alarms going off in the city at night, and the feeling when you wake up at night and feel lonely, rain against the window. When I was a child I was afraid of the dark. But it's a very straightforwardly romantic song, about a fear of the dark which can be conquered by somebody you love being there."
(Literally 21, 1999)