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Jealousy

Writers - Tennant/Lowe
First released - 1990
Original album - Behaviour
Producer - Harold Faltermeyer, Pet Shop Boys
Subsequent albums - Discography, PopArt, Concrete, Smash
Other releases - single (UK #12)

Although this is the closing track on Behaviour, it dates back several years beforehand; in fact, it was the very first song that Chris and Neil wrote together—its original title was apparently "Dead of Night"—and thus it holds a very special place in PSB history. Chris had composed the basic melody in 1982 on a piano in the dining room of his parents' home in Blackpool, while Neil's lyrics were apparently inspired by a friend's jealousy over none other than Chris, whom this friend feared had supplanted him in Neil's affections. Neil thought that the melody Chris had composed sounded like something the great French chanteuse Édith Piaf might have sung, so he wrote lyrics that he felt she might have sung as well—only in English, of course. It was one of several songs that they employed in their earliest unsuccessful efforts to obtain a recording contact. Later the Boys planned to include an early rendition on the Actually album, which was initially slated to be titled Jealousy, but they held off on it for reasons that, as far as I know, they've never explained.

Although the protagonist of this song is indeed grievously wronged by his wayward lover, he's no innocent victim. In fact, with his nagging questions about his lover's behavior ("Where've you been? Who've you seen?") you get the distinct impression that he may have driven his partner away from him. Jealousy is, after all, a rather unattractive and ultimately destructive emotion. That's probably what's going on with the song's overblown orchestral coda, which mirrors the narrator's over-dramatized self-pity.

If there's any doubt about this, consider the "Extended Version" (appearing as a bonus track on the CD single), in which Neil quotes briefly from Shakespeare's Othello—a tragedy in which rampant unjustified jealousy is taken to its logical extreme of murder and suicide. As the villain Iago says of the tragic hero as he gradually succumbs to the jealousy that will prove his downfall:

Not poppy, nor mandragora,
Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world,
Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep
Which thou owedst yesterday.

It's no accident, then, that the "dramatic setting" of this song is a bedroom where the sleepless narrator torments himself: "At dead of night… I lie alone." He has become the inheritor of Iago's curse on Othello.

Incidentally, there are subtle differences between the album and single versions. Most notably, the orchestral backing of the album version was produced by keyboard samplers, whereas the single version was re-recorded with an actual orchestra.

Annotations

As noted above, the "Extended Version" opens and closes with Neil's recitation of a brief quotation from one of world literature's greatest works focusing on jealousy, Shakespeare's Othello. It describes how Othello's jealousy will cause him to lose sleep, just like the song's lyrical narrator. Of course, jealousy will cause Othello to do much more than merely lose sleep—which then might make you wonder about the imaginary fates awaiting the song's characters as well.
It's easy to overlook in light of everything that follows, but it's hard to think of a PSB song with a more mutedly shocking opening couplet than this:

At dead of night when strangers roam
The streets in search of anyone who'll take them home

"I lie alone, the clock strikes three" – F. Scott Fitzgerald, who's alluded to in the Behaviour opening track, "Being Boring" ("a famous writer in the 1920s"), wrote in one of his 1936 The Crack-Up essays, "In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning." If it's a coincidence that this should turn up in the same album's closing song, it's a remarkable one.

Mixes/Versions

Officially released

Mixer: Julian Mendelsohn
- Album version (4:49)
  - Available on Behaviour
Mixer: David Jacob
- 7" Mix (4:14)
Mixer: David Jacob and Pet Shop Boys
- Extended Version (7:58)
  - Available on the "Further Listening" bonus disc with the 2001 reissue of Behaviour
Mixer: Tim Weidner
- Live Concrete rendition with lead vocal by Robbie Williams (6:18)

Official but unreleased

Mixer: unknown
- 1982 demo, aka "Dead of Night" (4:20)
  - It's quite possible that this was very first demo recording ever made by Chris and Neil together.
- "Abbey Road demo" (year unknown), aka "Dead of Night" (3:48)
- 1986 demo (7:04)

List cross-references

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