Pet Shop Boys Community

Are there any songs that you hated or did not care much for on the first listen but months or years later, eventually ended up liking therm a lot?

Did they grow on you over time? Or did you just listen to the song again after many years and found a new appreciation for it at the time? I think it would be nice to see which songs we only started liking long after they were released.

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I'll start.

Twenty Something
I really did not like this song on release. I thought it was just so musically so boring. But I have it another shot a couple of months ago and really liked it. It's like I listened to it for the first time again but the result was the total opposite.

Footsteps
Since 2009 or 2010, I forget which, when I splurged and bought all the albums before YES (due to me liking Yes so much), this track rated a nothing in my opinion. Not hate, not like. Just a very average track and I spent my time listening to other tracks. Zero interest. Recently that changed as I found myself listening to it a lot and I really like it a lot.
It grew from a not worth mentioning throw away track to one of my favourites.

Burning The Heather
When Hotspot released I though it was a very average album. Not much worth listening to. After giving it another chance of recent, I really liked it. It's now my favourite album of the trilogy (Electric/Super/Hotspot).
Burning The Heather is the track I am playing the most from this album now. I really like the song now. I never would have expected this to be my favourite track on the album.

As an aside, Wedding In Berlin is the only sour note on the entire album. It's like Legacy on Yes. The album feels finished without last track. Just final tracks I never listen to. Integral (from Fundamental) feels similar, more like a bonus track as the album feels finished with Indefinite Leave To Remain. The main difference here is Integral is a great track where Legacy and Wedding in Berlin are not.

I’ll never like Twenty-something.

Well, being totally honest… West End girls. Found it very haunting and creepy along with Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights. After getting Please though…

Now it’s one of my ATF of theirs. On the recent tour I was feeling pretty emotional when they did West End girls styled as if was 1985/86 again.

I thought The Survivors was a pretty forgettable track on Bilingual, skipping it most of the time. Until I heard the 2012 live version and then it clicked.

New York City Boy.

Avoided it for years. Now I really enjoy it, especially live.

The Sound Of The Atom Splitting.

Love comes quickly
Jack the lad
Liberation
Legacy
Bolshy

My October Symphony and King of Rome. Both are in my top 10 now.

Being boring.

It's alright. I didn't hate it, I just didn't think much of it... until I stumbled on this video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVnMwHENHBM

and it made me almost cry. The beauty of the lyrics, the concert set up where you see and hear all the instruments and singers... The message is clear: music could make everything all right.

I get Along - makes more meaning to me today

DJ Culture

It Always Comes As A Surprise
The Survivors
Birthday Boy
Radiophonic
Invisible
Say It To Me

daveid wrote: Mon 01 Apr 2024, 9:06 pmBeing boring.

This. I dismissed this in 1990 because it was... boring, at the time. But now I've paid attention to the lyric and understand the nostalgia, it's come to mean a lot more. I can feel that train ride to London viscerally.

I tended to skip over all the ballads to begin with but damn, they snuck up on me. If you told my 1990 self thatin 2024 I'd be swooning over To Face The Truth or Nervously (Nervously!), I'd have chased you out of the room with a baseball bat.

Also love It Always Comes As A Surprise and two beauts on Format: Always and Bright Young Things.

I think it's the vulnerability I like. And yes, I now like Vulnerable too.

Release came out a month before my 18th birthday. I had been away at boarding school for the release of Nightlife, and had missed the tour, so felt like I had missed the era. I needed to reacquaint myself with the Pet Shop Boys, now I was home, happier to live my own identity and it was easier to be a FAN.

I was keen for a new sound, but Release wasn't what I wanted at that age. I would have enjoyed Electric or Super much more. I enjoyed the graphic design, the photos, the B-sides, I went to the tour in Oxford (with my Mum), I read the tour programme like a religious text, but the album itself left that teenager cold. Of course, they had been around for a long time, it felt to my young self that they might be close to retirement. It was Miracles that brought me back on board and gave me that thrill again. If only I had known I'd still be getting that thrill more than 20 years later.

Now, 40 in a month, I love Release. I appreciate what it is supposed to be and enjoy the sound. It might be my imagination, but I do think the 2017 remaster gave it a bit more punch. I know some people see Release as a blip in their catalogue, but I like it. I have now collected all four colours of the foil cases too!