PET SHOP BOYS – “Always On My Mind”
In the comics series Phonogram, there’s a scene in which the – kind of horrible – pop DJ Seth Bingo and his indie collaborator Silent Girl are struggling to work a recalcitrant dancefloor into life. Their solution? “Play the Blondie!” – a copy of “Atomic” which literally glows as it’s withdrawn from its sleeve.
Every club and every DJ has this kind of record – the song you put on as an act of faith to galvanise the night, or as an act of celebration to help it to its peak. “Always On My Mind” has been one of mine. There comes a point whenever I play pop music to a crowd that I want to play the Pet Shop Boys, and the next question becomes, well, why not play this? Those five seconds of groans and drum tracks to alert the lapsed or doubtful and then – boom! The mighty, unmistakable synthesiser fanfare which is the Boys’ great addition to the song, kicking off one of the most simply and sympathetically joyful tracks we’ll ever encounter, a gallop of sequenced Eurodisco drum lines and bright blasts of keyboard in service of the original track’s warm chords.
“It’s A Sin” found the Pet Shop Boys pushing their hi-NRG arsenal into the red, conquering pop by overloading it: “Always On My Mind” unleashes the same level of force but this time they’re handling it with happy precision, while somehow preserving the song’s humility under all the flashes and bangs. They manage this partly through another marvellous performance from Neil Tennant. He can’t compete with the arrangement’s fireworks so he stands back from them, making himself a calm, sincerely regretful presence in the middle of the track, and making “Always On My Mind” seem as heartfelt as it is grandiose.
Of all their big singles it’s perhaps their most relaxed – there’s no particular cleverness or conceit, no great message to take away, nothing ironic or ‘subversive’. Their other hit covers have points to prove: “Where The Streets Have No Name” is a bit of anti-rockist mischief making, “Go West” a defiant coming-out parade. Here they are making a huge technicolour hit simply because they’re pop stars and that’s their job: “Always On My Mind” has no real gameplan or reason to exist other than to delight people. It feels – appropriately for a Christmas Number One – like a gift, and I think that generosity is what makes a friendly dancefloor always respond so well to it. I don’t play “Always On My Mind” every time I DJ – there are always too many new and rediscovered peaks to fit in – but if the night’s gone well I always feel like I did.
10
Tom in Popular • featured content • 5,185 views
Quick notes:
- the video is from the Pet Shop Boys’ ‘interesting’ fillum project, It Couldn’t Happen Here, so maybe I am being slightly disingenuous in implying AOMM is an act of the purest generosity. But it’s long since shaken off any associations it had with that.
- the extended mix of this on Introspective deserves, and may one day get, its own post.
- I decided not to mention “Fairytale Of New York” in the blurb (partly because I half suspect it’ll end up getting to #1 EVENTUALLY). It is an excellent record, I do not enjoy it as much as this one but I do feel one of the four weeks “Always” was at the top could have been handed over. Oh well.
(And there have now been more 80s 10-out-of-10s than the rest of pop PUT TOGETHER! Anyone would think I grew up then or something.)
I’m not a huge fan of the PSB but I like this better than most of their stuff.
I think Neil Tennant benefits from singing a lyric which he hadn’t written himself – and particularly one which is such an iconic song.
The Elvis version is a camp classic with his intense, theatrical performance. PSB achieve a different sort of camp here with NTs almost affectless delivery contrasting with the frenetic pulse and synthetic brass flourishes of the music.
I’m surprised you didn’t mention Tom that this originally surfaced in an ITV special to mark the 10th anniversary of Elvis’s death in September which, this song apart, was filled with dross (although Kim Wilde’s “One Night” was notable for non-musical reasons). Initially the PSBs seemed reluctant to put it out because they had one more single to come from “Actually” which we will get to shortly.
I like it but wouldn’t give a cover 10.
I’d argue that the marks for this and “It’s A Sin” are the wrong way round ;-)
I’m surprised you didn’t reprise what you said about this song a few years ago on ILX, Tom –
this is one of Tennant’s finest vocal hours because in his slight diffidence you can hear exactly how and why he neglected his lover, and in the unstoppable synthesized beat you can hear exactly how he’s going to get him back
^^which is completely OTM, absolutely crucial to why this version succeeds, and a line I always think of whenever I hear or think about this song. It’s a difficult balancing act to pull off, to convey a character flaw like that without losing sympathy (or more precisely, without making the listener transfer their sympathies to the object of the song) – and MOST DON’T, especially the kind of passive-aggressive weedy boy who uses Tennant’s diffidence as a template. I think it’s because Tennant sounds resolved to actually rectify this flaw, or at least try.
One who does succeed is Ne-Yo on “Part Of The List”, where you can hear this fastidious attention to minutiae that would have driven the girl away but which is also what makes the song so great as a crafted piece of work.
Haha you also wrote (in Oct 2002), “I want this played at my wedding” – was it?
Oh – yes that is a good line! Well done me :)
And yes it was played at my wedding, at least to the extent I can remember what was played at my wedding….
I love both versions, but I prefer the PSB version only for this subtlety. At the end of the main chorus in the Elvis version, they hold that last note.
The Pet Shot Boys pull a trick where they inject two new bass notes that bridge to the post-chorus. Those two notes are the ones that have hooked me into this song altogether.
Oddly enough, whenever I go back to the Elvis version, I so want to hear Elvis’s band play those Two Crucial Bass Notes.
A well-deserved 10, although maybe not to the “Always in my House” version.
Was the Willie Nelson version known in the UK at all? It was huge around 82-83 in America, and I thought of this as a Willie Nelson song when the PSB version came out. Willie also sings it in an understated way, which is probably the best way to approach a lyric that can come off as “things on my mind: we’re out of milk, you, my sister’s birthday is next week.”
Yes, I distinctly remember playing it at your wedding, in a bit of a rush when I remembered that the bride & groom shuffle off before everyone!
Possibly not a ten for me (Always In My House might have been, but for annoying my sister reasons) but I love it and hear it probably as often as I need to (ie about once a month a Poptimism – of which there is one this Friday!)
I was surprised by the 10 for this. It’s probably my favourite of the PSB’s number ones, but I still think they had stronger singles which didn’t get there. I love the weird roaring noise which opens the track, it gives me a shiver of anticipation for the rest of the song every time I play it.
And I’m glad it blocked Fairytale of New York, which just irritates me.
(New here, by the way)
I’m also with the less-than-a-ten crowd, probably around an 8, but I like what you say about it seeming like a gift – it’s a good way of getting across how at ease the record sounds.
Finally, a PSB single gets a 10! I was kind of worried, since I knew it was the only one left that had a chance.
This is, for whatever it’s worth, my favourite single ever – I remember the first time I loved it, on Fox FM in bright Oxfordshire sunshire and thinking it was Elvis; it’s as pure a translation of joy – as I understand & feel it – as any medium’s ever brought to me.
I like what you said, once, about the note of triumph in “Gi-ive me…” – that Tennant is at that moment & for the first time totally certain that he’ll get his second chance.
I find AOMM a big yawn, and the love for it expressed here quite baffling. The synth chords bludgeon (I swear this band’s arrangement and keyboard skills went backwards from their first album), the voice is thin, the rhythm track is unremarkable. I’d take True Faith (let alone Peekaboo – a genuine ’80s ’10′ in my view) by at least several points over this any day of the week. To me, AOMM sounds knocked out in about half an hour using It’s a Sin’s presets, which were lousy. I understand that I’m in the minority on this, but apart from people reliving youthful PSB-mania I don’t see how this can be seriously thought an especially delightful record, let alone one of the best ever made. Unwanted consistency watch: where does one begin? Perhaps with TomScore(Jailhouse Rock) = 7. I mean, good God. For me, AOMM can score no more than a:
5
No complaints from me. This is a solid 10. Not only one of the PSB greatest singles, but one of my favourite songs, period. Pure bliss!
My favourite part, which, iirc, is absent from previous versions, is towards the end when Tennant sings “Maybe I didn’t love you…” omitting the following “quite as often as I could” line. I’m not sure if it was intentional but to me it suggests a shift towards a more genuinely reflective, rather than apologetic tone. As if all of a sudden he understands.
BTW, I would’ve given “It’s a Sin” and “West End Girls” 10s too (although maybe the former deserves a slightly minor 10).
BTW this was a nice blurb and all but my favourite review of AOMM is still Tanya Headon’s, which I find remarkable not just because it’s ROFL, but also because I cannot object to a single thing she says about it. I was going to post a link but I can’t find it :(
Tanya: written ten years ago just six weeks from now!
“The Pet Shot Boys pull a trick where they inject two new bass notes that bridge to the post-chorus.”
I recall them saying in interview how they had deliberately simplified the song – reduced the chord sequence or something. What mattered to me was that it was at the RIGHT SPEED.
I woke up in my first year college room, turned on the radio on my modular ghetto-blaster thing, and went back to sleep. I had a dream that went at a tremendous canter, and when i woke up again, this was the dream tempo on the radio.
MY. FIRST. SINGLE. And the 12″ at that. which i still have.
Not actually my first single – i’d had (eg) Rubber Ducky by Sesame Street bought for me when i was very small – but the first one i bought for myself. Which (if you know me) seems like a late stage, but before now I had been happy KILLING MUSIC BY HOME TAPING the top 40.
As others have variously observed, I’d give either this or It’s A Sin a 10 depending on my mood that week.
That year I thought xmo number one was going to be Barcelona.
Most predictable 10 ever! I love it but I’m a little sick of it I guess and several of the PSB’s excellent b-sides and album tracks from this time are still quite new to me so I’m spending more time and love on them.
The spectral gusto of Horn and Lipson seems to be chief informant here as with It’s A Sin – the despairing other side of the drama-ramic coin to the euphoric immense sound of AOMM. In a particularly busy year of hit songs that aimed for enormity (IAS, China…, You Win Again) the apex arrived in this climactic affair.
Elvis recorded it first in 1972. In the States, it was a b-side. Willie Nelson had the next biggest hit with it in 1982, peaking At number 5. But I was surprised to find that this version made it to number 4. Not as enthused as Tom’s 10, more like an 8. A good overhaul of what, at that time, was already an Adult Contemporary evergreen.
There is a moment in every pop music fan’s life that he or she is asked to consider 2 versions of the same song and decide which is the better version. “Always On My Mind” is one of those moments. Elvis’ version was imperious, untouchable. A piece of grand pop perfection, larger than the sum of it’s parts. Presley’s almost restrained vocal, the orchestraition that allows the song to build naturally, to suck you in emotionally, to feel what Elvis felt, what Willie felt, what Brenda felt…what Neil felt. Country music tells stories, conveys emotion to those who find emotion the hardest thing to convey. Elvis elevated it to high art, this conveying of longing, of yearning, of hope. It’s a boomer anthem. If you can imagine the postwar generation wondering for what, their parents and grandparents sacrificed in 2 world wars, and then the 60′s came with it’s paranoia and permissiveness and the other side of that, the 70′s almost nullifying the hippy philosophy with recession and energy crisis and Vietnam. AOMM through that lens becomes an apology, an act of contrition. An admission of guilt. For the next generation it shines. An achingly beautiful tale of lost love with the hope of love regained. A promise of a better tomorrow. And this is where Neil comes in. This is probably one of the most forward-looking nods to the past ever. It feels re-invented, re-imagined and new like all good cover versions should be, but always aware of its roots and origins. In the wrong hands, the song could have drowned in sparkly newness, but it’s much more deft and clever than you think. How do you speed up a slowie and keep it’s earnest integrity?
Wiki states it’s all in the cadence:
“The Pet Shop Boys version introduces a harmonic variation not present in the original version. In the original the ending phrase ‘always on my mind’ is sung to a IV-V7-I cadence (C-D7-G). The Pet Shop Boys extend this cadence by adding two further chords: C-D7-Gm7/B♭-C-G (i.e. a progression of IV-V7-i7b-IV-I).”
The change allows for AOMM to accelerate into a higher tempo arena without it feeling rushed or clunky. The change allows this version to build with the drama and urgency necessary for a discoed up, camped up homage to Elvis, Brenda and Willie. Just a little tweak that makes all the difference. IMO, this elevates the PSB’s vesion to the top. Among the greatest cover versions ever made, and worthy of a 10 indeed.
Great comment thefatgit – was hoping someone would explore the covers angle in a bit more depth! (I’d forgotten the Elvis TV special entirely!)
Yes, in the U.S. the Willie Nelson version is the best known. Some may be dimly aware that it was recorded by Elvis first, but it is not associated with him at all.
I hadn’t seen Tanya’s review of this, but boy oh boy, she had it right on the nose. Given some space and restraint, this thing might have some impact, but as it is it’s an awful blaring piece of crap brought down by the fact that it’s exactly the kind of thing that Neil Tennant cannot be trusted with whatsoever. I genuinely hate this.