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I Want to Wake Up

Writers - Tennant/Lowe
First released - 1987
Original album - Actually
Producer - Shep Pettibone, Pet Shop Boys
Subsequent albums - (none)
Other releases - bonus track with single "Can You Forgive Her?"

The torture of being in love with someone who doesn't love you back. "You're in love with he, she's in love with me, but you know as well as I do I can never think of anyone but you." Tormented by unrequited love, yet loved by someone he himself doesn't love, the narrator feels as though he's living a nightmare from which he desperately wants to wake up. That's pretty much the gist of it—although at the end of the song, in an extremely clever lyrical twist, Neil notes that the only possible way to wake up from this terrible dream, at least in a positive way, is to "wake up with you."

But there's no shortage of ambiguity in this song. I have to confess that for a long time—somewhat uncharacteristically—I really hadn't given a great deal of thought to the implications of the "You… he… she… me" lines noted above. They might outline a heterosexual love quadrangle, but one of my site visitors astutely pointed out to me that they could also be read as a bisexual quadrangle in which the "you" to whom the song is addressed is male, making it three men and one woman in a dizzying eddy of actual and would-be relationships. Perhaps this is why songs like "Tainted Love" and "Love Is Strange" bring tears to the narrator's eyes: they strike too close to home. Is the narrator, up until recently strictly heterosexual in his relationships, only now discovering his homosexual feelings, causing him to want nothing more than to wake up from the bad dream of romantic entanglements and sexual complications in which he now finds himself?

This song originated with a backing instrumental track that Chris wrote on his own, for which he then asked Neil to write lyrics. Neil, for his part, took lyrics that he had previously composed for a song he had written on his own titled "I Heard What You Said"—which have been retained as the first words of the song—and applied them to Chris's track, making appropriate adjustments.

Annotations

"My radio played songs like 'Tainted Love' and 'Love Is Strange'" – "Tainted Love" was written by Ed Cobb, formerly of the vocal quartet the Four Preps, and was originally recorded by Gloria Jones as a b-side in 1965. It was later popularized during the U.K. Northern Soul club scene of the 1970s. It's best known, however, for its 1981 hit electropop cover version by Soft Cell. "Love Is Strange" (the songwriting credits for which are subject to debate of almost legendary proportions) was originally recorded by Bo Diddley in 1956, but gained fame a year later as a hit single by Mickey & Sylvia. It was subsequently covered by Buddy Holly, the Everly Brothers, Peaches & Herb, Paul McCartney and Wings, Everything But the Girl, and many others. These two pop classics are mentioned in "I Want to Wake Up" as poignant signifiers of mood; as the song's narrator states, hearing them evokes "sudden tears." (Love can indeed be both tainted and strange.)
Expanding upon the idea of a "bisexual quadrangle" described above, the site visitor who suggested this theory points out that, as also noted above, a remix of "I Want to Wake Up" by PSB friend and collaborator Johnny Marr, formerly of The Smiths, served as one of the bonus tracks with the CD single "Can You Forgive Her?"—itself a song that concerns tormented feelings arising from bisexuality. Coincidence?
Yes, the line "You're in love with he" is ungrammatical—obviously, even glaring so. But it's hardly the first time and certainly not the last that a lyricist forsook the rules of good grammar for the sake of a rhyme. In this case it's using the incorrect case of a pronoun, although replacing "I" with "me" and vice versa is a far more common violation of this type.

Mixes/Versions

Officially released

Mixer: Pet Shop Boys and Shep Pettibone
- Album version (5:10)
  - Available on Actually
  - There are slight variations at around 4:21 between the original 1987 album version and the 2001 reissue, but probably not sufficient to distinguish them as truly "different mixes"
- Breakdown Mix (6:00)
  - Available on the Further Listening bonus disc with the Actually reissue
Mixer: Johnny Marr
- 1993 Remix (5:26)
- Johnny Marr Groove Mix (5:45)
Mixer: unknown
- Demo (5:58)
  - Reportedly extremely similar to the above-noted "Breakdown Mix" except very slightly faster

List cross-references

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