Hit Music
Writers - Tennant/Lowe
First released - 1987
Original album - Actually
Producer - David Jacob
Subsequent albums - (none)
Other releases - (none)
Perhaps somewhat cryptically, Neil has noted that this number is about "what happens when you take the sex out of the disco." Another one of the Boys' early songs that seem superficial and trivial upon first hearing yet subsequently reveals deeper, richer layers of meaning, it's a frequently overlooked part of the PSB repertoire, despite the fact that Neil says it was among the first lyrics that he wrote in response to the AIDS epidemic. In retrospect, this fact becomes perfectly clear with such lines as these:
It's all about love and it's about forgetting
Choose a song when the night's too long
We all need love and we want protection
In short, we can take some solace in "hit music," which helps us get through the "long night." Note the punning reference to "protection," which became and remains a byword—not to mention a survival tactic—in the wake of AIDS.
Annotations
- This track's underlying bass-synth riff is clearly inspired by the famed riff from Henry Mancini's oft-covered 1959 classic "Peter Gunn" (the theme from the TV series of the same name). That's no accident; the germ of this song was planted when Neil was listening to Art of Noise's 1986 hit remake of "Peter Gunn" in a dance club. He caught himself spontaneously singing the words "Hit music, hit music" in accompaniment to it. But though the "Hit Music" riff is similar enough for the debt to be obvious, the Boys made sure that it's different enough to avoid any risk of copyright infringement.
- "In Kensington or Spanish Harlem" – Kensington is an affluent district of London. By contrast, Spanish Harlem is a not-at-all affluent section of New York City. In fact, in popular culture it has become something of a "shorthand archetype" for poverty—albeit of a somewhat romanticized variety—as in the classic Ben E. King song "Spanish Harlem" and Elton John's "Mona Lisa's and Mad Hatters" (to take just two of many examples). The juxtaposition of these two very different locales in a single line suggests they were chosen precisely for the tremendous contrast they offer, signifying places very distantly removed from each other geographically, culturally, and economically.
- "Hit Music" played an important role in bringing the Pet Shop Boys together with one of their most famous and frequent collaborators, former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr. Neil and Chris first met him by chance in 1987 in an elevator at the Mondrian Hotel in Los Angeles. Marr mentioned to them that he especially liked "Hit Music" from the Boys' recently released Actually. That brief exchange led to their working together quite often in the years since.
List cross-references
- Songs written by PSB that were inspired by AIDS (plus a few more debatable interpretations)
- The key signatures of selected PSB songs
- Real places mentioned by name in PSB songs
- My all-time favorite Chris Lowe sartorial statements
- PSB songs for which the Boys have acknowledged the influence of specific tracks by other artists
- Films that have featured PSB songs
- What it's about: Neil's succinct statements on what a song is "about"
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