Episode 14 - Being Boring by Pet Shop Boys

Art on your sleeve

Being Boring, a single by Pet Shop Boys is 30 years old today (12 November 2020). It's one of my favourite songs by one of my favourite pop groups and as such I felt I needed to mark the occasion. This podcast complements a Pop Art feature I wrote for Classic Pop magazine about the photography of The Douglas Brothers published in March 2018. The Douglas Brothers photography was used on the cover designs for the single, with graphic design by regular Pet Shop Boys creative collaborator, Mark Farrow. Neil Tennant has spoken in detail about what Being Boring is about and this is included in the podcast, but to quote from his book, One hundred lyrics and a poem: "An autobiographical elegy for my best friend from Newcastle whom I'd known since we were teenagers; he died in 1989 aged only thirty-four... The title was inspired by a Japanese review which said we were 'being boring'. I liked the bouncy rhythm of this phrase and confronting the criticism of our famously deadpan presentation. The teenage party referred to in the first verse was in July 1974 (actually, I had just ceased being a teenager) and the invitation quoted Zelda Fitzgerald, the wife of Scott Fitzgerald, from an article, 'Eulogy on the Flapper', published in Metropolitan magazine in 1922: 'She was never bored mainly because she was never boring.' In the second verse I leave Newcastle on the train to study in London wearing platform shoes (it was 1972) and assuming I would never move back. In the third verse I am a Pet Shop Boy recording in Munich, while back in London my friend has died and other friends are ill."