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Decadence

Writers - Tennant/Lowe
First released - 1994
Original album - Alternative
Producer - Pet Shop Boys
Subsequent albums - Very 2001 reissue Further Listening 1992-1994 bonus disc
Other releases - b-side of single "Liberation"

As they relate in the Alternative booklet, the Pet Shop Boys had been asked to write the theme music for a film titled Decadence based on a play by Steven Berkoff. Chris began writing a song built around a sample of the opening two bars of the Burt Bacharach/Hal David tune "I Say a Little Prayer" as performed by Aretha Franklin. When the song was finished, however, Neil and Chris decided that the track didn't need the sample and thus removed it. They also decided not to submit the song for use in the film after having seen a rough edit, which they apparently didn't particularly like.

According to Neil, the lyrics directly address "someone who's become a really horrible person because they take lots of drugs and all they think about is money." When once asked whether "Yesterday, When I Was Mad" was about the Boys' former manager Tom Watkins, Neil replied, "No, but 'Decadence' was." Neil has also stated elsewhere that he regrets the reference to "fin de siècle pretense" (fin de siècle is French for "end of the century," commonly a period for decadent behavior), chiding himself for his own pretentiousness in authoring such a line.

Johnny Marr, formerly of the Smiths, played guitar, giving the track a distinctly "unplugged" feel—which undoubtedly inspired the Boys to go all the way and provide an "Unplugged Mix". Chris says the recording "cost a fortune."

Annotations

"You don't care about nothing" - The opening line's blatant double-negative is one of the most egregious examples of "bad grammar" in all of PSB lyric-dom. Surely Neil, the lyricist, knew it was a double-negative, so did he write it that way because it's how his "character" (the narrative persona) in the song would naturally speak? Maybe since (as one of my site visitors has suggested) the person whom he's addressing is somewhat careless and, yes, "decadent," putting it like this is a way of talking down to him and "speaking his language," including bad grammar. On the other hand, Neil might have written it this way because the more grammatically correct rendering, "You don't care about anything," doesn't work as well rhythmically. Or is it evidence of a more conscientious, intellectually based disregard for "traditional grammar" on Neil's part? Whatever the case, pop music overall is replete with examples of "bad grammar." If anything, it tends to occur much less often in PSB lyrics than it does in the songs of most other rock/pop artists.
"It costs more than dollars and cents" – I'm fascinated that British artists so often refer to "dollars" and "cents" in their songs as opposed to "pounds" and "pence." This song is only one of many examples in popular music. If it were only for the sake of rhyme, it's needless in this particular song since "pence" rhymes with the final syllable of "decadence" every bit as much as "cents" does. Is it because the narrator of the song and/or the person to whom he's speaking is American, Canadian, Australian, or from one of the other countries that use those words in their currency? Is it because more countries do indeed use dollars and cents as opposed to pounds and pence, so the former terms are a little more universal? Or is it because monetary concerns are so stereotypically American that referring to American rather than British currency "resonates" better and serves, at least to non-American ears, as a stronger put-down?
"This fin de siècle pretense" – Fin de siècle is a French phrase meaning "end of century," but it has become an idiomatic expression to refer to any period of jaded decadence.
"Stop this caprice…" – The word "caprice" refers to a sudden, seemingly unmotivated and often purposeless notion or action. It traditionally carries rather negative connotations, and that's how it's used in "Decadence." Yet it's one of those negative terms that, perhaps because it actually sounds somewhat positive, has been adopted by modern (often American) commercial interests to connote something desirable. The most obvious example is a car model, the Chevrolet Caprice, manufactured from 1965 through 1996. To digress a moment, my all-time favorite example of this phenomenon involves the term "Vanity Fair," which first appeared John Bunyan's 1678 novel The Pilgrim's Progress as the name of quite an awful place—in keeping with the traditional regard for "vanity" as a bad thing—but which in more recent years been used to refer to presumably more positive things, such as the title of a famous magazine and a brand of paper products. And I strongly suspect that the person(s) who chose the name Nvidia for their tech company had never heard the word "invidious," or at least understood its meaning.
With regard to both of these terms—fin de siècle and caprice—one of my site visitors has helpfully pointed out that the website for London's Tate Art Galleries offers a good deal of pertinent information. There it states that "Fin de Siècle is an umbrella term embracing symbolism, decadence and all related phenomena (e.g. art nouveau) which reached a peak in 1890s. Although almost synonymous with other terms such as the Eighteen-Nineties, the Mauve Decade, the Yellow Decade and the Naughty Nineties, the fin de siècle however expresses an apocalyptic sense of the end of a phase of civilisation." Therefore it's almost certainly no accident that "Decadence" includes the line "It's the beginning of the end." (Of course, considering when the song was written and released, the fin de siècle that it actually refers to surely isn't the end of the nineteenth century but rather the end of the twentieth.) The Tate also includes the only known oil painting by the famed "decadent" fin de siècle artist Aubrey Beardsley, Caprice. Verso: Masked Woman with a White Mouse (c. 1894). Neil, quite possibly aware of this fact, may have been inspired, either consciously or unconsciously, by this work to employ the word "caprice" in the song.

Mixes/Versions

Officially released

Mixer: Pete Schwier
- Original version (3:56)
  - Available on CD1 of the "Liberation" single (as well as on Alternative and the Very 2001 reissue Further Listening 1992-1994 bonus disc)
- Unplugged Mix (3:21)
  - Available on CD2 of the "Liberation" single

List cross-references

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