What Keeps Mankind Alive?
Writers - Brecht/Weill
First released - 1993
Original album - Alternative
Producer - Pet Shop Boys, Jonathon Ruffle
Subsequent albums - Introspective 2001 reissue Further Listening 1988-1989 bonus disc
Other releases - bonus track with single "Can You Forgive Her?
This song, taken from Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's The Threepenny Opera—the same 1928 musical that features the much more famous "Mack the Knife"—was originally recorded in 1988 by Neil and Chris for a British radio program commemorating the musical's 60th anniversary. They didn't choose the song; rather, they were specifically asked to perform it. Richard Coles, formerly of the Communards, assisted them with the difficult chords.
Although they had some trouble with the music (at that relatively early 1988 stage of their career they weren't yet as musically adept as they would eventually become), the Pet Shop Boys' own well-documented political sympathies no doubt enabled them to appreciate the socialistic bent of Brecht's lyrics, which describe man's proverbial inhumanity to man in distinctly economic—and culinary—terms. The recording remained officially unreleased until they decided to present it as one of the bonus tracks with their 1993 single "Can You Forgive Her?"
As an interesting aside, when the Boys responded in 2001 to a fan's question about their least favorite officially released PSB recording, they specifically cited "What Keeps Mankind Alive?" as one they're "not that keen on."
Annotations
- The Threepenny Opera (German Die Dreigroschenoper), from which this song is taken, was written by German dramatist/lyricist Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) and composer Kurt Weill (1900-1950), premiering in Berlin in 1928. Based on the 1728 ballad opera The Beggar's Opera by English writer John Gay, the Brecht/Weill work offers a Marxist critique of capitalism. (Few songs, in fact, make this clearer than "What Keeps Mankind Alive?") Though originally written in German by Germans, the musical is set in Victorian London. Tremendously popular, it was quickly translated into a variety of other languages, including, of course, English. The musical's best-known song, "The Ballad of Mack the Knife," is the opening number following its overture.
- "What Keeps Mankind Alive?" isn't the title that Brecht and Weill gave the song. In fact, it's not even the English translation of their title. The "correct" title of the song is "Dreigroschenfinale," which translates to "Threepenny Finale." Since it comes at the end of the second of three acts, and since the first act ended with a different "Dreigroschenfinale," the song is often referred to in English as "The Second Threepenny Finale." But when it's covered by others outside the context of the musical, its title is often rendered as "What Keeps Mankind Alive?" after the recurring central question posed by the song's chorus. Before the PSB rendition, its best-known "outside" version was probably that of Tom Waits, who covered it in 1985, also under the title "What Keeps Mankind Alive?"
- The opening verse refers to the Seven Deadly Sins, which of course the Boys had famously referenced in their video for "It's a Sin" and would again allude to in "The Clock 7/8/9" from The Most Incredible Thing. The Seven Deadly Sins, as traditionally taught by the Catholic Church, are anger, envy, gluttony, greed, lust, sloth, and pride (though the last is nowadays often referred to instead as "vanity" since "pride" has taken on more positive connotations among the general populace in recent years).
List cross-references
- PSB "cover songs" and who first recorded them
- The key signatures of selected PSB songs
- PSB songs that they themselves apparently dislike
- Burning questions posed by the titles of PSB songs
- What it's about: Neil's succinct statements on what a song is "about"
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