Weddings and funerals

[Dog]

There’s a theory that Shakespeare’s comedies end with a wedding, while his tragedies end with a funeral. It’s interesting to apply this to PSB albums. So many of them finish with one or the other, particularly if you expand the notion of a wedding to include celebrations and affirmations of hope and life itself, and funerals to include deaths, both real and metaphorical.

Albums that end with weddings or celebrations:

Please / Why don’t we live together? (wedding) - “why don’t we live together?”
Hotspot / Wedding in Berlin (wedding) - “we’re getting married today”
The Most incredible Thing / The Wedding (wedding)
Ultimate / Together (wedding) - “together we’ll go all the way”
Introspective / It’s alright (celebration) - “the music plays forever”
Bilingual / Saturday night forever (celebration) - “forever, forever”
Electric / Vocal (celebration) - “they play it all night long”
Discography / Was it worth it? (celebration) - “yes it’s worth living for”
PopArt / Somewhere (celebration) - “we’ll find a new way of living”

Albums that end with funerals or deaths:

Elysium / A requiem in denim and leopardskin (funeral) - “this is our last chance for goodbye”
Alternative CD1 / Your funny uncle (funeral) - “another life begins today”
Actually / King’s Cross (death) - “dead on wounded on either side”
Very / Postscript (death) - “I know we’ll meet again”
Relentless / One thing leads to another (death) - “they close your eyes”
Yes / Legacy (death) - “that’s it, the end”
Super / Into thin air (death) - “we’ll vanish, no one will know where, into thin air”
Battleship Potemkin / For freedom (death) - “let death remind us, we can all be strong”

When Pet Shop Boys are looking to wrap up an album it seems they’ve pretty much two options - love, life and hope; or death, escape and rebirth.


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[domino]

Please / Why don’t we live together? (wedding) - “why don’t we live together?”

Introspective / It’s alright (celebration) - “the music plays forever”

For these two (at least) I would've extended the era and got to the other end of your theory:

Please: Paninaro (Violence, Religion, Injustice and Death)

Introspective: Your funny uncle (more suitable than Alternative, Disc 1)

[daveid]

Good spot mainly but some of those are a bit tenuous especially Somewhere and Together.

Of course anyone who's been unhappily married would argue that tragedies start with weddings.

[Dog]

Please / Why don’t we live together? (wedding) - “why don’t we live together?”

Introspective / It’s alright (celebration) - “the music plays forever”

For these two (at least) I would've extended the era and got to the other end of your theory:

Please: Paninaro (Violence, Religion, Injustice and Death)

Introspective: Your funny uncle (more suitable than Alternative, Disc 1)

Yes, I like this. I guess with the further listening discs though, these run in the order that the songs were created, rather than there being a conscious curated choice to put a particular song in a particular place on a disc.


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[Dog]

Good spot mainly but some of those are a bit tenuous especially Somewhere and Together.

Of course anyone who's been unhappily married would argue that tragedies start with weddings.

Yes some are tenuous certainly and maybe I haven’t articulated things particularly well. But for me there is a commonality between the likes of Together, Was it worth it?, It’s alright, A red letter day, Somewhere, Go West, Saturday night forever and Vocal which make them ideally placed as album / disc closers. They all look to the future with optimism - a Pet Shop Boys’ version of optimism, but optimism all the same.


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[Dog]

Agenda’s The forgotten child is another one for the funeral list.


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[ype]

I think this is an excellent observation, very interesting.

[jasonjohn]

OK so slightly off topic, but songs that hint at "leaving together":

- Together
- More than a dream
- Fugitive

[Dog]

OK so slightly off topic, but songs that hint at "leaving together":

- Together
- More than a dream
- Fugitive

Yes, I agree, they can all definitely be read as suicide pact songs.

Running away songs

Two divided by zero
Into thin air
London
A new life

Giving up everything songs

To step aside
Breathing space
The dictator decides
Burning the heather

More here:

viewtopic.php?t=31284


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[OakeyDokey]

How does Behaviour fit in? It is the best, after all

[Dog]

How does Behaviour fit in? It is the best, after all

I would say Jealousy has at least one foot in the death camp. There’s the overblown coda and the fight in the video. The original title was Dead of night. And it’s probably their song with the biggest through line to Shakespeare given the use of the Othello quote in the 12” and the subject matter of jealousy. From Geowayne:

“Although the protagonist of this song is indeed grievously wronged by his wayward lover, he's no innocent victim. In fact, with his nagging questions about his lover's behavior ("Where've you been? Who've you seen?") you get the distinct impression that he may have driven his partner away from him. Jealousy is, after all, a rather unattractive and ultimately destructive emotion. That's probably what's going on with the song's overblown orchestral coda, which mirrors the narrator's over-dramatized self-pity.

If there's any doubt about this, consider the "Extended Version" (appearing as a bonus track on the CD single), in which Neil quotes briefly from Shakespeare's Othello—a tragedy in which rampant unjustified jealousy is taken to its logical extreme of murder and suicide. As the villain Iago says of the tragic hero as he gradually succumbs to the jealousy that will prove his downfall:

Not poppy, nor mandragora,
Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world,
Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep
Which thou owedst yesterday.

It's no accident, then, that the "dramatic setting" of this song is a bedroom where the sleepless narrator torments himself: "At dead of night… I lie alone." He has become the inheritor of Iago's curse on Othello.”


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[OakeyDokey]

Very good.

Plus 'This Must Be The Place I Waited Yars (sic) To Leave' is of course another opener that fits into the 'Running Away' canon.

[alternativeformat]

Plus 'This Must Be The Place I Waited Yars (sic) To Leave' is of course another opener that fits into the 'Running Away' canon.

"Dreamland" for escape as well, right?
And maybe "More than a dream"?

And it seems that when they select a song to cover in a big way, it is often about escape:

• "Where the streets have no name (I can't take my eyes off of you)"
• "Go West"
• "Somewhere"

I like the wedding/funeral theory on closers, too!

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[eastendboy]

At my funeral (hopefully won’t be happening just yet) the 10” mix of west end girls will be played when the coffin is being bought in and the sound will be cut just after the first few words, sometimes you’re better off dead. After the service it will be postcipt.

[alternativeformat]

No hurry for mine either, but when I was feeling my mortality a good while back, I worked up a mix CD to be given to friends at my funeral, whenever it's to come to pass. I should consider updating it with suitable beloved tracks that have been released in the meantime. Anyhoo, the unlisted hidden track at the end is "Go West" (Ming's First Movement).

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