Bolshy
Writers - Tennant/Lowe
First released - 2013
Original album - Electric
Producer - Stuart Price
Subsequent albums - (none)
Other releases - (none)
The leading candidate for the dumbest Pet Shop Boys song ever, which isn't necessarily a bad thing coming from such reliably intelligent songwriters. It's like a blast of fresh air—almost revolutionary, in fact. It's also one of the most maddeningly infectious things they've ever recorded. More than once I've awakened in the morning with this track playing in my head for no discernable reason aside from the viral way it insinuates itself into your consciousness. Or subconsciousness, as the case may be.
"Bolshy" was among the last songs composed for Electric—unlike most of the others, written well after the Elysium sessions. Its chorus ("Bolshy, Bolshy, Bolshy, Bolshy, oh/Where you lead my heart will go"), for all of its seeming "dumbness," immediately suggests two possible readings. In the first, Neil's narrative persona is in love with a "Bolshy," which could refer to a leftist political radical or simply to a rather boisterous individual. (See my annotations below.) In the other reading, that persona is, in effect, singing to himself—or, more precisely, to his own leftist political ideals and beliefs—affirming that he will always go where his heart leads.
I've always leaned more toward the former, in which "Bolshy" is indeed someone with whom the narrator is in love. As it turns out, in the March 2014 issue of the PSB Fan Club publication Literally, Neil described the narrator as "a pathetic man who's in love with a very difficult woman." Unfortunately, his feelings may not be wholly mutual, at least to the extent that the narrator desires. He asks "Bolshy" to give him a sign of her true feelings, though he admits that those feelings might be repressed—but only just barely:
There you are, pretending you're lonely
I don't believe you don't know you could own me
The "you don't know you could own me" line is often repeated, underscoring its subtle irony. You see, the Marxist Bolsheviks (from whom the "Bolshy" name is derived) rejected the very concept of private ownership of property. But the narrator repeatedly asserts that Bolshy could indeed "own" him, if only she would fully acknowledge and embrace it. That, I believe, is the central conceit around which the entire song is built: how a leftist who ostensibly rejects private ownership nevertheless can't escape the way in which people come, figuratively, to "own" each other through love.
As one of my site visitors wrote to point out, several lines lend themselves to somewhat playful readings given the song's Bolshevik subtext. "Raise your voice, start a feud" echo the idea of starting a revolution, and "Where you lead my heart will go" parallels the way the Bolsheviks, true believers in their cause, followed their leaders to spread the revolution. That latter line might even suggest a sort of "totalitarianism of love," so to speak—the way in which love can sometimes lead people to do things, almost blindly, that they might not otherwise even consider. Neil's choices of words and phrasing are hardly accidental.
Hmmm—maybe it's not such a dumb song after all.
Annotations
- Bolshy – This mainly British slang term—sometimes alternately spelled "Bolshie"—dates back to around 1915-1920. It has several different meanings, all of which are conceptually linked. As an adjective it can mean either "boisterous" and "noisy" or "stubborn" and "defiant." It can also refer to someone who is considered overly assertive. Neil has specifically described it as meaning "difficult," "awkward," or "rude." Also, as both an adjective and a noun, it can be used to refer to a radical, to radicalism, and to behavior stereotypically associated with radicals. This latter meaning, of course, points back to the origins of the term as a shorthand reference to the Bolsheviks, the extreme leftist socialists who led the early twentieth-century Russian Revolution and who evolved into the Russian Communist Party. But Neil himself mentioned in an interview that "bolshy" means "awkward," which therefore may have been what he specifically had in mind when writing the lyrics.
One of my Russian site visitors has observed that the word "bolshy" itself is a very close approximation—in fact, the most common transcription into English (alternately as "bol'shy" or "bol'shye")—of a standard Russian word, больше, which means "more." Another Russian site visitor, however, has countered that an alternate (and perhaps even better) translation would be "bigger." So to Russian ears, it sounds as though Neil is singing "More, More, More" or "Bigger, Bigger, Bigger" when he sings "Bolshy, Bolshy, Bolshy." In fact, it comes full circle, so to speak, when you consider that the word from which the English slang term "bolshy" is derived, "Bolshevik," is itself derived from the Russian word for "majority," большинство (bolshinstvo), which in turn is etymologically linked to bolshy, "more" or "bigger." Neil, being something of an amateur student of Russian history and culture, may have been very well aware of all this in writing the lyrics—although, as far as I know at this time, he has alluded only to the aforementioned British slang meaning when talking about the song.
- While not part of the "lyrics proper," a number of Russian words and phrases appear as samples in the recording. The track starts with a countdown-like utterance that seems to have been sampled from The Conet Project - Recordings of Shortwave Numbers Stations, track TCP D2 8, "The Russian Man," indeed featuring a Russian man counting down a series of numbers:
Russian Transcription Translation Восемь - пять - четыре Vosyem' - pyat' - chyetirye Eight - five - four Восемь - пять Vosyem' - pyat' Eight - five
Then come several lines sung by Neil in English, immediately followed by essentially the same thing translated into Russian, spoken by a female voice that Chris has verified in an interview was lifted from a Google online translation routine:
Russian Transcription Literal Translation Поднять свой голос * Podnyat' svoy guolos Raise your voice Начать вражду * Nachat' vrazhdo Start a feud Избалованный выбором *
Izbalovanniy viborom Spoilt for choice Я не решаюсь Ya nye ryeshayos' I hesitate Вмешиваться Vmyeshivat'sya To intrude *The first three phrases above are apparently expressed in "non-idiomatic" Russian and don't reflect how most native speakers of Russian would express similar ideas. What's more, the second and third phrases I'm quoting above do not coincide with the album's lyric sheet. Not one but two of my Russian site visitors strongly disagree with the lyric sheet, asserting that the phrases actually used in the recording (shown above) are indeed closer to the English than the phrases that appear on the lyric sheet: Начало вражды (Nachalo vrazhdi), meaning "Start of a feud," and Испорченный для выбора (Isporchenniy dla vibora), meaning "Too bad to be chosen." Since I'm almost totally ignorant of the Russian language—and since the Boys themselves have stated that they were relying on a possibly flawed online translation routine—I'm using these alternate translations in the table above.
Later it happens again, with Neil being "echoed" in Russian:Russian Transcription Translation Вот вы Vot vi There you are Вы одиноки Vi odinoki You're lonely Я не верю Ya nye vyeryo I don't believe Вы можете владеть мной Vi mozhyetye vladyet' mnoy You can own me I'm deeply indebted to regular site visitor "Alexey from Russia" for providing most of this information regarding the use of Russian in "Bolshy." Additional linguistic input was provided by George "Jammer" Dashevsky and Misha Nazargulov.
Mixes/Versions
Officially released
- Mixer: Stuart Price
- Album version (5:45)
- Instrumental (5:45)
- Released on an official promo CD
List cross-references
- PSB songs with "Russian connections"
- PSB songs that have been used in films and "non-musical" TV shows
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