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The Survivors

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

With this track Neil and Chris responded to recurring rumors that one or both of them have AIDS. In essence, they simply express how they feel as "survivors" of the epidemic (which by 1996 seemed to have peaked since more effective treatments had recently become available), being able to continue and flourish while so many others, including close friends, sicken and die. They're grateful for their good fortune, yet saddened by the losses around them. They feel the best thing they—or anyone—can do to commemorate those who have passed on is indeed to survive, carrying on in their stead. "Somehow we'll survive."

Neil has noted, in a 2009 interview with Andrew Sullivan, that AIDS was only one of the inspirations for this song. The other chief inspiration was the suicide of Kimberley Leston, a young woman he used to work with at Smash Hits magazine. The lines about "Saturday girls" and "suits and sequins" refer specifically to her ("She was in sequins," as Neil put it). So, from that perspective, "The Survivors" isn't just about surviving AIDS: it's about surviving all the terrible things that life can hurl in your path, some of which can lead to premature death.

By the way, Neil has stated elsewhere that, of all their "non-singles," this is the one he most regrets not releasing as a single.

Annotations

"Cross a windy bridge one winter night / Past Embankment Gardens, enter warmth and light" – Although there are more than one Embankment Gardens, the ones specifically referred to in this song are those along Victoria Embankment in the Greater London city of Westminster, between Westminster and Waterloo Bridges. These gardens are prized by Londoners as peaceful respites in the midst of their city. The "windy bridge" is Hungerford Bridge, which lies between Westminster and Waterloo Bridges. As Neil told interviewer Michael Bracewell in a November 2003 interview (in connection with the release of PopArt), this song "is about going to funerals, but it mentions London landmarks—crossing Hungerford Bridge, and then going across Embankment Gardens to the club Heaven in Villiers Street." In fact, the Heaven nightclub was specifically what the Boys had in mind with regard to "enter[ing] warmth and light."

One of my longtime site visitors, David B, therefore quite accurately interpreted the first stanza of the song when, from personal experience, he described this walk to me as:

…across Hungerford Bridge, then down the steps, through Embankment tube station, past Embankment Gardens (on the right), and then up Villiers Street to the Strand, Trafalgar Square, Theatreland, warmth and light, etc. Being a South West Londoner who often crosses the river from Waterloo station, it's a journey I've made countless times and is something of a quintessential London experience: Hungerford Bridge is very bleak and windy in the winter and there's a wonderful sense of being suddenly embraced in the warmth of the West End.
"Saturday girls" – British slang for young urban women in their late teens or early twenties who work in shops, usually as sales clerks. (The term "Saturday girls" possibly arose from the fact that such shops often employed young women as additional help for Saturdays when they had more customers than on weekdays.) Neil has described it as a reference to three girls who worked with him at Smash Hits in the early 'eighties, one of whom (as noted above) later committed suicide. These same girls formed their own singing group—called, yes, "Saturday Girls"—and Neil wrote a song for them that they never got around to recording. But this early song apparently evolved years later into "Don't Drop Bombs," recorded by Liza Minnelli.

Less commonly the term "Saturday girls" has been used to refer to certain young gay men who, after spending their work week in more conventional men's attire, dress in drag on Saturday nights, thereby transforming themselves into "Saturday girls." Given the AIDS-related theme that underlies one level of meaning in this song, it's possible—though, as already noted, by no means essential—that Neil may have had this alternate usage in mind as well.
"Twinsets and pearls" – Twinsets (sometimes spelled as two words, "twin set") have been a staple of women's fashion since the mid-twentieth century. They consist of a sweater (usually a button-up cardigan style, though most often worn unbuttoned) with a matching short-sleeved top. And they are indeed very often worn with pearls.

List cross-references

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