To Face the Truth
Writers - Tennant/Lowe
First released - 1990
Original album - Behaviour
Producer - Harold Faltermeyer, Pet Shop Boys
Subsequent albums - (none)
Other releases - (none)
"It hurts too much to face the truth," sings Neil, which is especially true when the truth you're facing up to is either the disintegration of a love relationship or, as Neil described it in One Hundred Lyrics and a Poem, "unrequited love." This sad midtempo song—which the Boys had written back in 1984, when they were still working with their original producer, Bobby 'O' Orlando—covers similar territory as another older "resurrected" number, "Jealousy," at the end of the same album. Both songs, for instance, describe the narrator lying alone in bed late at night, his lover out with someone else. But this one does so in a gentler, more poignant manner.
You get the distinct impression that, although he's noting how difficult it is to confront the facts, he is in fact now doing so and is preparing himself to move forward in his life without his erstwhile lover. "I know it's time I should grow up," he says. So, in the song's final verse, he tells his lover that, although he's still in love with her (in the booklet that accompanied the 2001 reissue, Neil states flatly that this song tells "a heterosexual story"), he's going to end the relationship. And when he asks her if she cares, it's her turn to face the truth.
Ingeniously, Neil leaves us hanging as to precisely which truth she is now forced to confront. Does she care that the narrator is breaking off their relationship, or doesn't she? But Neil later summarized (again in the 2001 reissue booklet) the basic truth to be faced in this song: "that the person you're in love with is not in love with you."
Annotations
- In One Hundred Lyrics and a Poem, Neil reveals that he borrowed the line "You are the only one" from the 1969 film Midnight Cowboy. "For some reason," Neil added, "this line stuck with me," noting that he and Chris used it again in their later song "The Only One."
List cross-references
- The key signatures of selected PSB songs
- The early tracks that the Pet Shop Boys recorded with Ray Roberts and Bobby 'O'
- What it's about: Neil's succinct statements on what a song is "about"
All text on this website aside from direct quotations (such as of lyrics and of other nonoriginal content) is copyright © 2001-2020 by Wayne Studer. All Rights Reserved. All lyrics and images are copyright © their respective dates by their respective owners. Brief quotations and small, low-resolution images are used for identification and critical commentary, thereby constituting Fair Use under U.S. copyright law. Billboard chart data are copyright © their respective dates by Nielsen Business Media, Inc.