Seriously, is there anything better than the Pet Shop Boys?

As for the Eminem song, it was all the talk in rockcrit circles for a couple of months (Dre even considered issuing a response record), but no one else knew about it.

That further proves my point! They were the only people talking about it!

"The Night I Fell in Love", it's on Release

Yes there was. There were also hot guys.

May take a minute to load.

Basically, it's like New Order but with a witty gay dude as a singer/lyricist instead of an illiterate moron, not a bad idea!

Opportunities seems to define the 80s pretty well, or at least the 80s as I imagined it was in NYC from movies as a child...Gordon Gecko, Less Than Zero, etc...

So, yeah...Pet Shop Boys...sweet.

Yes!

(nb I love New Order, esp. nowadays)

Good dance floor is a different matter, House was the real problem for PSBs. Their great love is hi-energy/italo disco and that slightly naff sensibility worked great when remixed by mid 80s greats like Pettibone. Like Madonna, who similarly does disco naiff really well. they produced some thrilling pre-house disco moments when guided by the right collaborators. However come the great death of songs that was House they sounded very old fashioned. At the time I was surprised that they never did a blue monday.. ie a real vocal less dance floor hit. Maybe they had house alteregos? Or maybe Chris isn't actually as good as Neil thinks he is. That is probably the million dollar question.

Few real club classics despite two decades of trying - they work better as home music than house...

"At night, the people come and go
They talk too fast, and walk too slow
Chasing time from hour to hour
I pour the drinks and crush the flowers"

which I've always wanted to believe is a back-handed allusion to "in the room the women come and go talking of michaelangelo."

Basically, it's like New Order but with a witty gay dude as a singer/lyricist instead of an illiterate moron

This is officially the most ridiculous thing I've heard all week.

How exactly is that the Pet Shops have 'gone wrong' as it were? I am well aware of the truth of this assertion, but it seems a little curious that they should have done so. "Behaviour" and "Very" are utterly terrific records, and such a sharp fall-off seems implausible.

"Before" was clearly an effort to make that elusive club anthem alluded to above, as was "Paninaro '95", and neither was quite brilliant, if certainly neither bad. I must admit I am very fond of "Single Bilingual", the title-track and single of their 1996 album; it has a very amusing lyric, a sing-song melody and thunderous, stampeding South American percussion. But the album overall didn't quite work, did it? And since then I only really know the singles, which are sometimes decent but ultimately *aren't essential*, and that would never have been right for prime PSBs.

But Spencer posits more of a class battle, I'd guess, between the Essex, left school at 16, boys and the ex grammar school student favourites. I have always felt that Depeche Mode were the outsiders - less dancefloor, more synth rock after they abandoned clean cut pop. Would you see Soft Cell & Human League as in some way bridging the gap?

All, except probably NO who were more generally liked, developed rabid cult followings. Both PSBs and Erasure fan clubs for example seemed to have become key meeting places for gay teens. Though fan clubs lie outside my direct experience and I have only heard annecdotal evidence...

There is no way the PSBs spent two decades, or anytime at all, in my opinion trying to make club hits, their music is intentionally camp and ott to avoid becoming middlebrow or accepted, at least that's what I would very very strongly believe. They coated everything in pop to avoid becoming middlebrow or canonical in a traditional way.

My point was that House was a disaster for them. Prior to house djs like Mark Moore would drop PSBs records in with Italo-disco, Jam & Lewis tracks etc And they were hanging round in clubs themselves. After 1987 you never heard PSBs played by any decent club dj. They sort of lost their confidence and held onto an outdated sound. Why they didn't start DJing is an odd question..

and I don't think "pop" is or ever was an outdated sound, their music is no less weakened by time than that of the house music guys of the era, indeed stands up alot more than most.

regardless of where they performed, I simply don't hear the PSBs as music of any era (except perhaps the very late stuff) as failed attempts at house. They are a pop act, they never wanted to become fully house, what would have been the point? Would have been just jumping on a bandwagon.

Is there even one house track on their "Back To Mine"?

Not to say they didn't like house music, of course they did, but what you like and even what you perform at does not equate to wanting to be that sound. They are the essence of pop, a concept which has infinite possibilities, far beyond those of actual genres like house.

And I say this as a house fan/DJ. I only play one PSBs record ever, when I DJ, "Some Speculation", but I don't choose not to play the others because I think "these are crap house tracks", I don't play them because they are NOT house, the PSBs never could be anonymous enough to make house music and that is no failure in my eyes, for a band with several albums and that kind of career. Far far far from it.