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We All Feel Better in the Dark

Writers - Tennant/Lowe
First released - 1990
Original album - Disco 2
Producer - Pet Shop Boys
Subsequent albums - Alternative, Behaviour 2001 reissue Further Listening 1990-1991 bonus disc
Other releases - b-side of single "Being Boring"

Considered by many to be Chris Lowe's masterpiece, and perhaps acknowledged as such by the Boys themselves in their "Performance" stage show, in which an elaborate dance sequence was set to an extended version of this song. As Chris has explained, it was inspired in part by a tape he bought at a health food store located near the studio where he and Neil were working at the time. The tape was titled The Secrets of Sexual Attraction.

Chris describes the excitement and ecstasy he feels in nightclubs while dancing with someone he finds highly attractive. The sinuous music, while somewhat techno-oriented, is nonetheless extremely evocative and sensual, as overtly sexual as the words themselves. As in other "Chris tracks" like "Paninaro" and "One of the Crowd," Neil's apparent role is reduced to singing the title line (which, again like "One of the Crowd," may be an expression of Chris's relative shyness) over and over again in the chorus. It may be simplistic and formulaic, but when the results are as satisfying as this, it's hard to complain. Chris, on the other hand, doesn't seem entirely satisfied with those results. As he once put it, "The words are terrible. Awful. Embarrassing." (I sometimes wonder whether he's particularly chagrined by the line "I'm feeling really horny.")

By the way—do we all feel better in the dark? That undoubtedly varies from one person to another. But it's generally agreed that most people tend to look better in the dark (or close to it), which is one of the main reasons why bars, nightclubs, and dance clubs almost always have dim lighting.

One of my site visitors, however, wrote to me with some interesting alternate interpretations, including a highly metaphorical one that I find especially intriguing. What if we consider the phrase "in the dark" in its common figurative sense, as in somebody being "kept in the dark"—that is, not aware of the truth? Do we all indeed feel better when we're kept in the dark, when we aren't fully aware of the awful reality of the situations in which we find ourselves? In light of the much later song "Luna Park," which suggests (among other things) that people do often take comfort in the "darkness" of illusions that shield them from the harsh light of reality, we might well consider this possible "adjunct" interpretation.

Annotations

The repeated phrase, apparently "Pump that beat," is probably a digitally modified borrowing from the 1986 track "Pump That Bass" by Original Concept.
This track almost certainly also includes a brief snippet ("Get down!") taken from Loleatta Holloway's extensively sampled 1980 dance classic "Love Sensation."
"… the beat is dead loud" – The slang use of "dead" in this way as an adverb to intensify an adjective is by no means unheard of in American English, but it's far more common in Britain. In short, "dead loud" means "extremely loud."
"I'm feeling really horny" – I'm not so prudish to say that this is a "crude" line, but it's possibly the most graphically salacious in the entire PSB catalogue, though other lines from the same song—"You know I really want it" and "You know you really want it"—rank right up (or down) there, too. The word "horny" meaning "lustful" or "sexually excited" can be traced back to the 1800s and almost certainly derives from the preceding century's expression "having the horn," referring metaphorically to a male erection. Its earliest references were (naturally enough) reserved for men, but in later years it came to be used just as often in reference to women.
I once read comments by someone online who felt that this song lent itself to the notion that fans very often prefer to be "kept in the dark" about those aspects of a celebrity's life that they would find distasteful. In particular, he believed that the Pet Shop Boys might be hinting that many if not most of their fans would "feel better" if they remained "in the dark" about their sexuality. While I don't believe for a second that Chris and Neil intended such an interpretation, I have to confess that I find it fascinating.

Mixes/Versions

Officially released

Mixer: David Jacob
- 7" version (4:00)
  - Available on Alternative
Mixer: Pet Shop Boys and David Jacob
- Extended Mix (6:48)
  - Available on the Further Listening bonus disc with the Behaviour reissue and on Essential
Mixer: Brothers in Rhythm
- After Hours Climax Mix (5:18)
  - Available on certain "Being Boring" singles
- Ambient Mix (5:22)
  - Available on Disco 2, mislabeled the "After Hours Climax"

List cross-references

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