Track-by-Track: From Please to Nonetheless

[Ghost within this house]

Track 22: It couldn't happen here

One of their greatest ballads. A devastating narrative, tightly crafted, with brilliant variations, especially in the bridge. This song captures the real lived-experience of the AIDS crisis better than any other. To me at the time it seemed to elevate them, even on such a brilliant album as Actually, to a higher plane as songwriters.

I'm glad they didn't go with the original plan of making the chorus: 'It couldn't happen here, just before it did' - although the strings line that plays the 'just before it did' melody still makes me imagine Neil singing those words.

Genius.

[leesmapman]

Pet Shop Boys, former one-hit-wonders, working with one of the greatest film composers, Ennio Morricone. I was impressed when I learned about that.

[Tom Angel]

And we shouldn't forget about Haçienda 1992. That version had the highest energy for me.

Never heard that version . Is it similar to XFM version..?

Thank you. Not recording the hacienda gig for relesse is so regrettable

A little bit, maybe with a bit more drum kicks, orchestral stabs and JJ Belle on guitar. You can hear it here from 05:30 to 08:32:

https://m.mixcloud.com/heejune-park/pet ... 13-may-92/

[Pinhead44]

It Couldn't Happen Here

Whilst completely accepting that I am highly likely to be in a minority of one here, for reasons I can't really explain, this track has never really clicked with me. Most tracks that I wasn't as keen on when I was younger, I have grown to enjoy as I've matured, but this one has just never done that.

So as my mother always taught me 'If you haven't got anything nice to say, don't say anything at all', I will just give my score and look forward to the next track 6/10

I do prefer the song to the film though !

[Neilatrone]

It Couldn't Happen Here

Whilst completely accepting that I am highly likely to be in a minority of one here, for reasons I can't really explain, this track has never really clicked with me. Most tracks that I wasn't as keen on when I was younger, I have grown to enjoy as I've matured, but this one has just never done that.

So as my mother always taught me 'If you haven't got anything nice to say, don't say anything at all', I will just give my score and look forward to the next track 6/10

I do prefer the song to the film though !

I might ask to join your gang. I never liked this song but accept most fans do. Sure, we can't like them all....

[D.J.]

It Couldn’t Happen Here is in my opinion a masterpiece. My top 5 PSB song ever. That build up that starts at 3:09 and explodes at 3:43 is the most euphoric part of any song (along with that huge build up in Always On My Mind/In Your House when the main riff finally appears around 5 and a half minutes in the song). I get goose bumps every single time.

[East End Bhoy]

For me, this song is one of my favourites. I think it's a masterpiece, and probably unlike any other song I'd heard up until that point. Back then I was generally into the bangers, but I remember this one floored me - it's so emotional.

Didn't Dusty choose it as one of her Desert Island discs or something?

[telys]

It Couldn't Happen Here

Whilst completely accepting that I am highly likely to be in a minority of one here, for reasons I can't really explain, this track has never really clicked with me. Most tracks that I wasn't as keen on when I was younger, I have grown to enjoy as I've matured, but this one has just never done that.

So as my mother always taught me 'If you haven't got anything nice to say, don't say anything at all', I will just give my score and look forward to the next track 6/10

I do prefer the song to the film though !

I might ask to join your gang. I never liked this song but accept most fans do. Sure, we can't like them all....

It's a good song, no doubt, but it would never be on my top list of PSB songs. It's a good album track though and would've been a good single from the movie. 5:21 on the album, a 3:21 7'' mix would've been another hit definately.
Actually and Very are the two albums where almost all tracks could've been singles. With Actually they had the opportunity to release 6-8 singles... to prolong their imperial phase. A better edit of the film, a proper soundtrack with alternative mixes and Always on my mind on in, that would've been a booster. Introspective came too soon.

[petshopgrrl]

Track 22: It couldn't happen here

One of their greatest ballads. A devastating narrative, tightly crafted, with brilliant variations, especially in the bridge. This song captures the real lived-experience of the AIDS crisis better than any other. To me at the time it seemed to elevate them, even on such a brilliant album as Actually, to a higher plane as songwriters.

Yes yes yes, this so much. I wasn't paying too much attention to PSB at the time so I don't think it registered that this was about the AIDS crisis in particular, but I definitely sensed a tragedy in the making among the swelling strings and the plaintive timbale. One epidemic and one pandemic later, this takes on a new meaning as a haunting testimony to man's hubris.

And because I've been too busy to keep up,

Hit Music is the GOAT. Or rather: it has a goat sample at 3:07. That's what I always think it is anyway.
I liked the Peter Gun/Venus bass combined with the string arrangement in it.

THANK YOU, I knew that bass reminded me of something but couldn't put my finger on it! Love this one too - it's propulsive and dramatic and feels slightly sinister, like One More Chance Part 2. So maybe this is One More One More Chance.

[Patrick Bateman]

ICHH is in my top ten PSB songs too. I always remember the anticipation listening on my Walkman between the end of Hit Music and side two of the cassette starting (using the high-tech Auto Reverse function ), waiting for its portentous, magisterial sweep across my imagination and then finally, Neil's dramatic intonation of "Yesterday..."

Back then I loved the lyrics without explicitly knowing what it was about - "in six-inch heels/quoting magazines" clearly foreshadowing its companion piece Being Boring. Of course it still seemed impossibly sad and tragic but also euphoric and uplifting, like so many of their best songs. Now the knowledge of what couldn't happen here makes it as elegiac as Being Boring or as inevitable as And the Band Played On. Thankfully, as Ghost intimates, Neil didn't add the lyric "just before it did", which would have been truly horrendous.

[jules]

Hit music and icch are totally fantastic.

[petshopgrrl]

OK folks, it's time... it's time... it's time.... to move on!

Track 23: It's a sin

Chronology: Actually, Track 7

Or, How Neil Tennant Became The Curse Of St. Cuthberts.

This, as any fule kno, rightfully became the Boys' second Number 1 hit in the UK and even I, with my fandom blinkers on, couldn't fail to acknowledge what a gloriously bombastic slab of Catholic guilt it was! The lyric is relatively simple and a bit cheeky and contains some great lines: "For everything I long to do / No matter where or when or who" (er coo gosh my dear), and then my favorite "Turned over a new leaf / then tore right through it" in that wonderful, haunting, soaring bridge. The video was probably a little too pretentious for me at the time and honestly, who puts LATIN in a pop song, but this could all be forgiven because it was such an utter stomper. 10/10

[telys]

OK folks, it's time... it's time... it's time.... to move on!

Track 23: It's a sin

Chronology: Actually, Track 7

Or, How Neil Tennant Became The Curse Of St. Cuthberts.

This, as any fule kno, rightfully became the Boys' second Number 1 hit in the UK and even I, with my fandom blinkers on, couldn't fail to acknowledge what a gloriously bombastic slab of Catholic guilt it was! The lyric is relatively simple and a bit cheeky and contains some great lines: "For everything I long to do / No matter where or when or who" (er coo gosh my dear), and then my favorite "Turned over a new leaf / then tore right through it" in that wonderful, haunting, soaring bridge. The video was probably a little too pretentious for me at the time and honestly, who puts LATIN in a pop song, but this could all be forgiven because it was such an utter stomper. 10/10

Majestic. Used to be a favourite but already by early 90s I had grown tired of it, the extended mix is my prefered version these days. The most recent cover is a disaster.

[Neilatrone]

Love It's a Sin. Flawless. Loved hearing stems of it before and to hear the layers of music and melody in all their glory.

Still amazed today about how a masterpiece like this can be written and constructed from nothing but an idea.

[telys]

Oh, in the Guardian livestream Neil divulges that it was Bobby O who came up with the melody/hook to It's a Sin and that they went with that when they rerecorded the song for Actually.