Pet Shop Boys Community

I know that a lot of fans like 'Very' and I'm not denying it's a good album but 'Behaviour' is seen by critics as their masterpiece. The reasons are that the lyrics, subject matters and production were better than before and the album was generally a lot more ambitious than their previous releases. 'Very' is a more straightforward pop record and critics are never going to go for that!!

Who cares about what the 'critics' think? It's what people who buy the records think that matters.

And anyway, Behaviour was slaughtered by reviews at the time, got mixed fan reactions and was a bit of a flop, Very was generally raved about from the music press and fans and was a massive commercial comeback.

And I can't see what was better production-wise, musically or lyrically than before.

I don't care what the critics think either, I was joking. The problem with these top 100 things is that while the public vote, all the albums seem to be worshipped by critics. As this is the case, I think 'Behaviour' would be a better vote than 'Very'.

Very/Relentless was #37 in the now defunct Muzik Magazine's 50 Best Dance Albums Of All Time, compiled a good few yearsback now!!

One of the crowd wrote:Very/Relentless was #37 in the now defunct Muzik Magazine's 50 Best Dance Albums Of All Time, compiled a good few yearsback now!!

I can see why Muzik would rate it highly, Q on the other hand find James Blunt and Coldplay experimental.

Well, I still believe the best ever PSB album is Nightlife.

And I don't care what anyone else may think

jamie1978 wrote:Well, I still believe the best ever PSB album is Nightlife.

And I don't care what anyone else may think

Well, with an opinion like that it's either that attitude or you need to start practising some martial arts.

Nightlife is actually rather popular, I have found, with non-hardcode or even non-fans.

I lost count of the amount of people who either copied it from me or bought their own copy when I was playing it non-stop at Uni back in 1999.

I believe it is their most consistently excellent work, and as their only 'concept' album I believe the execution is brilliant. I have never been particularly taken by their early albums. For me, PSB have produced their best work post-Introspective. With the notable exception of R*****e

I think the first 8 tracks on Nightlife (bar Happiness Is An Option) are up there with anything PSB have ever done. But the last four really let the album down horribly: all of them are bad songs and also so inconsistent that the whole thematical unity goes out the window. That makes it an inferior album to Actually, Behauviour and Very in my books. (And I actually rate Release on par with Bilingual and Nightlife)

Nightlife tracks 1-6 are fantastic, and of course, Happiness Is An Option is a major highlight. Vampires is OK but the rest is just *terrible*.

Nightlife is definitely an album of 2 halves although I find the whole album too glossy and over-produced. 'The Only One', 'NYC Boy', 'Footsteps' and 'Vampires' are really poor while 'Boy Strange', 'In Denial' and 'Radiophonic' are mediocre.

I love Nightlife, it just gets a bit tiring after a while - possibly due to the heavy production.

I think some of the last tracks on the album are amongst the best: Footsteps, Boy Strange and yes: New York City Boy, too. I think "In Denial" is a very strong composition, just badly executed.

The only track I don't like is "The Only One".

Uh, The Swan likes Footsteps. I bet you love The Best Of Cliff Richard.

Zeus On The Loose wrote:Behaviour is not generally regarded as their best album, it's just a big favourite among the current fanbase on the internet, the majority of which became PSB fans in the 90's. It was generally considered a disappointment at the time and tons of people stopped liking PSB because of it, then briefly came back with Very and totally lost hope after it.

Their best album objectively is Actually, though my fave is Please.

I am not part of that majority. I became a fan in the eigthies and at the time I -indeed- was rather dissapointed by Behaviour. I guess the more I grew up, the more I could appreciate an album like Behaviour. I am more a 80's kind of PSB fan I guess. Almost everything they did in the 80's was just great. At least, for me. And indeed... when the first single of 'Very' was released (Can you forgive her?) I thought....'yes!!! finally some single that is typical (or should i say : 'very'....) PSB! Can you forgive her? is just brilliant. Music-wise, lyrics-wise and video-wise.

I certainly did not loose hope after it. In my view 'Very' is overrated. 'Actually', for example is a much better (meaing: i like it much better) album indeed. When I first heard 'Billigual' in the record shop... I listened to the total album in one go. It thought is was fantastic. This album sounded good from the beginning... whereas some other albums.... had to grew on me. I still believe 'Billigual' is a fantastic album. I can't believe so many fans dish it. I lost some hope when Nightlife came out. I thought this was the very first album that somehow did not sound like PSB. Even 'Release' is more PSB then Nightlife. I am not kidding. But.... I think the PSB produced some of their best music during the Release era. You just listen to their B-sides from that era and you'll know what I mean. Warm, beautiful, full of emotion. Yes, I certainly didn't lost my hopes then.

joncool5 wrote:........ although I find the whole album too glossy and over-produced.

Yes. I completely agree. I seemed to me that they were trying too hard to make a popular/succesfull album. Sometimes it seemed that Neil forced himself to write 'simpler' lyrics. Whereas in the 80's his lyrics were indeed simpler, sexier, better to relate to. Now it seemed forced. But that's just how I see it. Music-wise Nightlife was indeed overproduced. The same I thought about 'Very'. I think with some different production Nightlife would have been an awesome album. Now it doesn't even sound like PSB.