petshopgrrl wrote: ↑Fri 04 Oct 2024, 11:51 pm
It's the ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-oohs and aah-aah-aah-aahs for me. Hooky as heck. Love the strings at the end too.
I can’t recall where, but in an interview with Alexander Balanescu he mentioned that the arrangements on the album are less complex than originally proposed. How intriguing!
On a separate thread, we’re discussing what’s missing from the Further Listening series. Snippets rescued from the studio trash are hardly unreleased gems, but I would be very interested to hear the original string arrangement for My October Symphony.
The doomed relationship dance grooves are appropriately restrained, its position as a PSB touchstone is difficult to counter, but doesn't it feel rather unbehaviourish? Arguably a better set of songs had it been omitted?
The whole package was there of great song, good b side and even the sleeve and remixes were good.
This was when the remixes were changing to the previous trend of Disco and Extended versions. Love the KLF and the Morales remixes, and the KLF version of It Must Be Obvious is off the scale but not in a good way apart from the intro.
It was for me a new PSB sophistication with the Mugler suit and IM blow up jacket. For me it’s the best look ever for them as a combo.
"So Hard" is associated to a 'strange' happening in my life.
Every I heard "So Hard" randomly on the radio, I got myself a new girlfriend! Well... it happened more than a dozen times in the nineties!! And a few more in the 00's...
The last time I heard "So Hard" on the radio was about 18 years ago when I met who became my wife...
somdigital wrote: ↑Mon 21 Oct 2024, 9:21 pm
"So Hard" is associated to a 'strange' happening in my life.
Every I heard "So Hard" randomly on the radio, I got myself a new girlfriend! Well... it happened more than a dozen times in the nineties!! And a few more in the 00's...
The last time I heard "So Hard" on the radio was about 18 years ago when I met who became my wife...
lol, you became the living embodiment of a PSB curse, congrats!
I hope for the sake of your marriage Elton John doesn't re-release this track or something
I'll repost my thoughts on 'So Hard' from the 25th anniversary of its release, way back in 2015!
It was the first record I ever bought. Actually, my Dad bought it for me on 7" vinyl because I was in sixth form college and unable to go into town to buy it myself on the day. My family didn't have a CD player until I got one for Christmas the same year, so the CD single purchase came later.
So Hard, with its unforgettable orchestral hit riff, was the most bombastic lead single since It's a Sin and nothing like the rest of the Behaviour album it came from. It would be three years until Can You Forgive Her? trumped it in the over-the-topness stakes.
Musically, So Hard is really three tracks in one. There's the ascending four chord change of the intro and bridge in F minor which is a direct homage to the chorus (if you can call it that) of I Feel Love. Then there's the "tough electronic groove" (Harold Faltermeyer's words) in C minor with the amazing filtered synth bassline that somehow seems to get sucked in on itself. Finally there's a pop song with a big C major chorus that's only one chord removed from Suburbia. Somehow Pet Shop Boys and their producers and programmers managed to skillfully weld all these disparate elements together into a cohesive whole of just under four minutes of pop perfection, allowing the excellent variety of So Hard mixes and remixes to separately explore each of these three musical directions.
So Hard is very strong both lyrically and melodically, featuring the timeless amusing Tennant lyric: "We've both given up smoking/'cause it's fatal/so whose matches are those?" The song is quite low within Neil's range. The melody of the "I will give up mine" line that ends the middle eight always reminded me of the "keep me satisfied" line from The Beatle's From Me To You; it's straight out of a 1960's pop song.
Sonically there's plenty going on in So Hard to sustain interest. In fact there's pretty much something for everyone. There are various bleeps, bloops and weird samples throughout, electric guitar power chords from the second chorus onwards, synth bells and a weird Theremin-like wailing sound near the end that sounds like it's from a rap record. There's even a porn star sample breathily expressing the song's title! The production is immaculate and the drum programming in particular is superb. I remember playing the extended and dub mixes on 12" vinyl deliberately slowly at 33 1/3 RPM on my parents' crappy Amstrad record player so I could hear all the parts more clearly, that's how obsessed I was by this record.
The sleeve for So Hard was a striking red and black affair and was the public premiere of Neil's short haircut; like number one hits his forthy perm gone forever. Dressed in black, Neil looked quite hard himself actually, whilst Chris nonchantly eats an apple in a slightly dirty-looking (but presumably expensive) Chevignon ensemble.
The promo video for So Hard is a classic Eric Watson scenario: lots going on with Neil and Chris in the background as observers and commentators, flanked by Dainton and another gentleman of similar wouldn't-want-to-mess-with-him-in-a-dark-alleyway build (wasn't he called something like "Strugger"?) The video is a pretty literal depiction of the song's lyrics and thrillingly, as with Domino Dancing, there's also a 12" edit of the video.
The BBC Wogan chat show saw the first television performance of So Hard, I seem to recall it was on the Friday night following the Monday the single came out. It was a memorable performance with Neil dressed in a sharp suit and Chris playing a Korg M1 and Emulator rig in a blow-up Michiko Koshino jacket. There was some sort of power failure at the start of the show, leading to Terry Wogan asking "have we got the boys lit?". We later found out that behind the bonhomie Neil and Chris were fuming because they'd been promised an interview which was reneged on, leading Chris to run off the stage at the end in protest.
The first time I saw So Hard performed live was on the Performance tour at the Birmingham NEC in 1991. It was even more OTT with additional orchestral hits and visually stunning with the twirling question mark umbrellas. It sounded fantastic.
TallThinMan wrote: ↑Tue 22 Oct 2024, 11:26 am
The song is quite low within Neil's range.
Perhaps this is where the ‘he can’t sing’ arguement comes from. What range does Neil have, maybe an octave?
For us, that matters not one jot. His voice, stuffed with both susceptibleness and defiance, sits so well in the songs. It reminds me of Julie London.
I don't know, but it's more than an octave. Compare 'Birthday Boy' and 'Decadence". The most important attribute of Neil's voice is that he sounds like no-one else.
Drico One wrote: ↑Sun 17 Mar 2024, 12:07 pmThis thread is for daily discussion of a Pet Shop Boys track, selected in chronological order, from studio albums starting with Please – including Further Listening – to the new album. The idea is to allow a 24-hour period of discussion for each track – then we move on to the next one. The first 11 albums will follow the Further Listening chronology (any track appearing more than once will have all of its versions discussed on first appearance). From Electric, we will follow the chronology of each single’s bonus tracks after discussing the studio album (and we will include the Annually EPs). These “rules” are so that everybody will know what the “next” track for discussion is.
Track 1: Two divided by zero
Chronology: Please, Track 1
This has a special place in the catalogue. Not only does it open Please, it effectively opens an entire career with an initial tale of escapology, clandestine romance, and mystery under cover of darkness. All the now-familiar recurring themes are to be found: the nagging concern over money, the urge to elope, and the exciting possibility of a new beginning. New York is the final destination - but we never really know if they get there. Like many Pet Shop Boys songs, the excitement and drama is to be found in the thought of escape - rather than in any actual break from mundanity itself.
I love this song to this day because it captures a sense that everything is thrillingly possible – even if it never actually happens. "Let's not go home" is a declaration to delay a return to domestic ennui. It outlines only a plan ("Tomorrow morning, we'll be miles away...") – rather than an actual escape… And that is key.
This possibility of departing from the, rarely satisfying, "here and now" will become a Pet Shop Boys leitmotif, and it is precisely this possibility that provides hope. To me, a train station platform seems to encapsulate their spirit of adventure, for it is here that they so often launch their plans for escape. Of course, their train is likely broken down (as in Birthday boy) because the thought of escape is almost always more alluring than the act itself. Even if they don’t actually depart, the sense of wonderment at what might happen if they do is always prevalent.
From Two divided by zero to Will-o-the-wisp, this theme of escape runs right through their entire oeuvre. Each track in their hallowed catalogue seems to represent another length of rail on which they can plot their triumphant departure. There is always a train to take to another place and time. As a means of drawing one in, there's hardly a better way to open an album than with the promise of adventure. And, oh, what adventures we will have…or, at least, plan to have.
Drico.
Tomorrow: West End girls (for anybody who wants to kick that discussion off), but today, have at Two divided by zero...
I need to listen to this song. Is it available on spotify @drico