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Electricity

Writers - Tennant/Lowe
First released - 1996
Original album - Bilingual
Producer - Pet Shop Boys
Subsequent albums - (none)
Other releases - (none)

In this highly innovative track—with its slow, hypnotic "sleaze groove" that sounds like nothing else the Boys have ever released—Neil breathily adopts the role of a professional drag queen specializing in "live lip-sync" performances. (He had a bad cold at the time of the recording, adding an unusual quality to his voice.) It's a bitchy semi-comic portrayal that nevertheless manages to convey the narrator's pride in what he does: "I'm an artist, honey—you gonna get me a drink?"

Disco-Tex and the Sex-o-Lettes, who are referred to in the song's oft-repeated refrain, were a disco novelty act of the mid-seventies, best known for their feather boas, the flamboyance of frontman and former hairdresser "Sir Monti Rock III" (born Joseph Montanez, Jr.), and their biggest hit, "Get Dancin'." (One critic has even credited them, in that particular song, with the single gayest line in popular music history, when Monti gushes, "My chiffon is wet, darling!") Neil chose them for good reason. It surely says a lot about the protagonist of "Electricity" when the standard against which he measures himself is one of the most outlandishly campy acts of the disco era—and, to be honest, not one of the more musically talented.

The sampled lines of dialogue—"What are you doing in San Francisco?" "Get out of here and take this cake with you!" and "What does this mean?" (the latter easily mistaken for "What does it mean?")—were taken from a film that Chris and Neil just happened to catch on the television around the time that they were recording this song. (This echoes how, nearly thirty years earlier, John Lennon had tacked excerpts from a coincidental radio performance of King Lear onto the end of the Beatles' "I Am the Walrus.") The identity of that film remained a mystery for more than two decades; even the Boys didn't seem to know what it was. But finally, in early 2019, fan and site visitor Kurt Belliveau discovered that they came from the 1942 film My Gal Sal starring Rita Hayworth, who's the woman delivering those lines to her co-star Victor Mature. All three lines occur in quick succession starting a little more than an hour and forty minutes into the movie.

Annotations

"Since Disco-Tex and the Sex-o-Lettes" – Disco-Tex and the Sex-o-Lettes were a briefly popular novelty act of the early days of the "disco era," known for their one big hit "Get Dancin'" (1974) and the singular flamboyance of frontman Disco-Tex, aka Sir Monti Rock III, né Joseph Montanez, Jr. Feather boas to die for.
Given the song's drag-queen lyrical persona, there seems little doubt that this track's notorious sampled lines of dialogue—especially "What are you doing in San Francisco?"—were chosen on account of that city's well-known association with the history of gay liberation.
A little background on the film from which those three dialogue samples are taken – My Gal Sal is a highly fictionalized biopic about American songwriter Paul Dresser (1857-1906), based on a biographical essay by his brother, the famed novelist Theodore Dreiser (their original surname), best known for Sister Carrie (1900) and An American Tragedy (1925). Victor Mature plays the role of Dresser. Much of the movie's plot centers on Dresser's see-saw romantic relationship with the popular vaudeville singer/dancer Sally Elliot (portrayed by Rita Hayworth), for whom the title song—one of Dresser's most popular—was allegedly composed. (There's evidence to suggest, however, that in real life it was inspired by another of Dresser's ladyfriends.) The scene during which the three bits of dialogue sampled in "Electricity" occur is set backstage, in Sally's dressing room, during a show in San Francisco. Dresser, unexpectedly appearing out of nowhere during one of the "down" periods of their tempestuous relationship, has surprised her with a cake: hence, "What does this mean?" (in other words, what's this cake doing here?), "What are you doing in San Francisco?" and "Get out of here and take this cake with you!" (those two are pretty self-explanatory). As it so happens, My Gal Sal was a box-office success, proving to be one of Twentieth-Century Fox's most successful films of 1942.
"Electricity" shares a remarkable connection with another PSB composition. The Boys were visiting Jamaica in January 1996 when Neil had a dream in which he had written a song titled "Friendly Fire" inspired by David Bowie. This "dream song" included the line "I'm an artist, honey." Inspired by Neil's dream, he and Chris subsequently wrote an actual song titled "Friendly Fire," which they ended up using in their stage musical Closer to Heaven. But Neil decided against using some of those "dream lyrics" in it, instead saving them for portions of "Electricity."

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