Track-by-Track: From Please to Nonetheless

[Patrick Bateman]

Track 68: "Yesterday, When I was Mad"
Very: Further Listening, CD1, Track 6

I remember the Select magazine review of Very saying this was one of the funniest things they'd ever done before I heard the song. It really is though. Like Mr Writer by The Stereophonics, only good.

Neil is basically Noel Coward on this, particularly in the video. Such hilarious lines, particularly "And someone said it's fabulous you're still around today/You've both made such a little go a very long way."

I love both versions and was obsessed with Jam and Spoon at the time owing to Tripomatic Fairytales. The video is mad as well, though obviously Chris's semi-absence was slightly ominous.

However, this is post-Ab Fab and maybe something has now changed. While I love the track, it's a single about the Pet Shop Boys. That's never going to get to number one. Just like when they released Single-Bilingual, which is a catchy song which was never going to have mass appeal because it's a tale essentially about the existential crisis of a businessman. Perhaps that doesn't matter anymore as synthpop is on its last legs in terms of chart success but it does seem that the single choices from this point on become more questionable.

[jasonjohn]

The vibe of Neil walking on stage to this during Somewhere was quite surreal.

[markus]

The Disco 2 remix (Coconut) is the best version, a radio edit of that and they would've Neiled it.

[telys]

This is where formats got out of hand. The single had 4 b-sides + enormous amount of remixes. The post-Very mini album.

[TallThinMan]

Track 68: "Yesterday, When I was Mad"
Very: Further Listening, CD1, Track 6

I remember the Select magazine review of Very saying this was one of the funniest things they'd ever done before I heard the song. It really is though. Like Mr Writer by The Stereophonics, only good.

Neil is basically Noel Coward on this, particularly in the video. Such hilarious lines, particularly "And someone said it's fabulous you're still around today/You've both made such a little go a very long way."

I love both versions and was obsessed with Jam and Spoon at the time owing to Tripomatic Fairytales. The video is mad as well, though obviously Chris's semi-absence was slightly ominous.

However, this is post-Ab Fab and maybe something has now changed. While I love the track, it's a single about the Pet Shop Boys. That's never going to get to number one. Just like when they released Single-Bilingual, which is a catchy song which was never going to have mass appeal because it's a tale essentially about the existential crisis of a businessman. Perhaps that doesn't matter anymore as synthpop is on its last legs in terms of chart success but it does seem that the single choices from this point on become more questionable.

I remember that Select magazine review. I also remember a BBC radio record review show where they slated the single and said the boys had run out of ideas because they were now writing about themselves and that they should give it up. The Rubicon had been crossed. That was 31 years ago!

I love the song. I like the duality of the title: Is Neil angry or crazy? I find the video quite disturbing. Let's face it, as a package it's a bit of a curio. It's had to imagine that Tom Watkins would have gone for it were he still their manager at this point. What would Edna in Huddersfield think?

[Patrick Bateman]

I remember that Select magazine review. I also remember a BBC radio record review show where they slated the single and said the boys had run out of ideas because they were now writing about themselves and that they should give it up. The Rubicon had been crossed. That was 31 years ago!

I love the song. I like the duality of the title: Is Neil angry or crazy? I find the video quite disturbing. Let's face it, as a package it's a bit of a curio. It's had to imagine that Tom Watkins would have gone for it were he still their manager at this point. What would Edna in Huddersfield think?

I suppose The Beatles got away with it with The Ballad of John and Yoko but then it's The Beatles. Also, pretty much any hip-hop artist chats about themselves.

Ultimately, I suppose the more pertinent point was that it didn't matter what singles they released as their chart-topping days were over. Synthpop was passe now and the charts were about to become more about the sounds of the ersatz 60s.

However, watching Girlbands Forever on iPlayer, it was really The Spice Girls that changed the charts irrevocably. Tweenies became a key demographic and record companies rushed to capitalise with ever more variations of manufactured pop. It's actually to the boys' credit that they kept trying to compete with those acts, rather than go down the OMD route and write songs for a crap pop group. Nightlife is my least favourite album but there's something wonderful about them rocking up on TOTP looking like that when everyone else is dressed like a Friday night at G.A.Y.

[Birthday Boy]

I love Yesterday, when I was mad. As someone who got into Pet Shop Boys with PopArt, I actually really appreciate all of these late 90s singles (I wouldn't normally do..., Liberation, Single-Bilingual, A red letter day, Before, etc.). In fact, I was a bit surprised when I first learned that many fans thought they were poor single choices, because for me they have always been on the same level as the 80s singles since I got to know them all at the same time.

Anyway, there are a lot of things that I like about this song, but possibly my favourite thing is the contrast between the very mean-sounding funny verses and the "then, when I was lonely, I thought again and changed my mind"-bit at the end, which always sounded so heartfelt and beautiful to me. Maybe I interpret too much into it, but this bit always elevated the song for me.

[nonesuch]

Anyway, there are a lot of things that I like about this song, but possibly my favourite thing is the contrast between the very mean-sounding funny verses and the "then, when I was lonely, I thought again and changed my mind"-bit at the end, which always sounded so heartfelt and beautiful to me. Maybe I interpret too much into it, but this bit always elevated the song for me.

That's really well put. Listening to this recently, I was struck by the vulnerability of that line.

[Sandy Shaw]

Whenever I hear this one, I always wonder which old queen was doing the disapproving.

In my head it was Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother who is not introduced in the song.

There is the (probably true) true story that the Queen Mum called down to her kitchen ''I don't know what you queens are doing but this old Queen fancies a drink!

[Drico One]

Very was their valedictory lap of honour, a final commercial and creative high before jumping the shark in 1994. It's simultaneously effervescent and intoxicating, fizzing with joyous wit and playful devilment, yet the noxious traces of their impending demise were inherent to it.

Go West took them over the top and down the other side one last time, never to return. It fundamentally changed their public image to the extent that ambiguity became utterly pointless. What had been their currency of mystery immediately devalued to the point of abolition. It had to be like this. Into the void pranced a form of madness, thrilling in its style of presentation but largely empty in musical terms. Can you forgive her? and Go West, genius-level pop singles in 1993, gave way to Absolutely fabulous and Disco 2 the following year. Dreaming of the Queen, hilarious, deft, and replete with deeper, universal meaning, was left on the album. The shallow, self-referencing Yesterday, when I was mad...was not.

I think all of this was somehow inevitable. Their genius ensured they, somehow and against the odds, made this era both creatively memorable and commercially potent. From 1990 to 1993, they peaked. Spectacularly. Behaviour-Performance-Discography-Very Relentless. Their hermetically sealed world closed in on itself and coagulated into its very essence as their commercial wave slowly went out. The gentle decline of their chart fortunes, and Neil's ever-receding hairline, fuelled a period of unmatched creativity. Everything distilled to its purest form. The music, the image, the concept. Like a dying sun, all that was finally left was a diminished echo of what once went before.

Our great fortune was that Very allowed them to go on and implode in their own natural way. White dwarfs still emit light - and every so often our heroes shine intermittently, a reminder of what was and still, just about, is.

Drico.

[markus]

Is it just me or does Neil seem to impersonate Holly Johnsson in the video? Elton John and George Michael had heir share - someone said, "It's fabulous you´re still around today,
You've both made such a little go a very long way"

[NOBODY75]

My favorite track on the album. The chorus is pop perfection. The Jam and Spoon remix is ​​in my top 3 remixes

[Patrick Bateman]

Track 69: "The Theatre"
Very: Further Listening, CD1, Track 7

And here's another classic. I was just checking and Another Day in Paradise came out four years previously. This is obviously on another level, both lyrically and musically. It's a close cousin of King's Cross, and one can imagine the youngsters coming down from the North ending up as the protagonists in this song. I love how Neil writes it from the perspective of the homeless, so it becomes empathetic rather than pitying towards them like Collins's track. We're still living in Tory Britain so there's the famous line about "we're the bums you step over as you leave the theatre". It's very early 90s in that sense and musically: the sound of Kilroy to a disco beat.

[Gabby]

I always thought it was pretty ballsy of them to play that at the Savoy residency, but also shows they have a social conscience to highlight an issue that literally greeted you as you leave the theatre after Somewhere.

[markus]

The song is flowing magma from a volcanic eruption caused by brutal oppression. A historic monument before a tides change in a time where a person who was earlier outnumbered can suddenly be voted the sexiest man alive.

The Theatre as track and a single candidate didn't have the same luck, just as well since people would'nt understand the anger anymore anyway.