Pet Shop Boys To Step Aside

Pet Shop Boys
To Step Aside
From "Bilingual"(1996)
(Coment of Neil and Chris from album card)
Neil: Chris wrote the music a while before. His demo was called 'Shame'.
Chris: This song sounds like the music for a holiday programme.
Neil: That's what George Michael said.
Chris: Some of it also sounds lide New Order to me. The bassline is from a keyboard that you only buy for that bass sound.
Neil: We struggled a bit with this , and then we applied the Spanish gypsies.I wanted it to sound like pilgrims singing. In the first verse you have me comparing my life with the pilgrims in Santiago de Compostela. These polgrims have walked 120 miles and it means they've achieved eternal salvation, and then there's pathetic Neil looking out of the hotel window thinking about how good it must be to have that kind of faith. The second verse is set in Budapest - these were both real trips I'd just taken. It was 1996 and in postcommunist Hungary there were still people who looked like they had really shit lives, and it was five years since communism had ended.They're still waiting 'for market forces to provide/ what history's so far denied'.Everyone really only wants the same things - comfort,security,education. It doesn't seem that much to ask.But it seems impossible to get it. And I'm sitting in a big international hotel drinking a glass of white wine and looking at them. There's a certain amount of guilt , I suppose , about that. And then,in the song,I'm comparing these things with what I'll decide to do,whether I should step aside because I don't want to be changed anymore by the expriences I've been going through. It's partly about me and the relationship I was in. The end bit is the important bit:'Will I always need you?/Would you want me to?' In other words,it's all very nice now, but sort of notion in the song about stepping aside from the Pet Shop Boys, or from pop music. Just thinking about what it does to you, being famous and being in a pop group. Do you grow away from your roots completely?I'm not convced that you do,but it's thinking about that,saying:maybe wouldn't it be a good thing to step aside? I sometimes think I'd rather give up the competition of the whole thing and live quietly somewhere. Live a simple life. Not try to be clever.I think about it all the time. But I don't want to do it, either.

hha1993 is Japanese. So there may be mistakes. Sorry, my English is not perfect.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• pet
• shop
• boys

[111roslin]

One of my favorite CD's

[rhymeandreasoning]

great cd..and i love the picture used for the cover..great shot of the boys.