Invisible
Writers - Tennant/Lowe
First released - 2012
Original album - Elysium
Producer - Andrew Dawson, Pet Shop Boys
Subsequent albums - (none)
Other releases - (none)
This slow, lush, but rather dour electronic ballad was intentionally "leaked" online in June 2012 as an advance teaser from the Pet Shop Boys' upcoming studio album Elysium, scheduled for release in September 2012. Although many fans initially believed this meant (bolstered by its accompanying video) that it was going to serve as the album's first single, this turned out not to be the case; instead "Winner" took that honor. As the official website quickly confirmed, "Invisible" was unveiled online simply to "give an idea of the album's sound."
The Boys wrote this song while on a visit to Berlin sometime in early 2011. Neil has stated that it was inspired by a woman's comment he read that "you reach the age of 45 and from then on when you walk into a room you're invisible." (In his book One Hundred Lyrics and a Poem, he added that he then thought, "Try being a gay man over the age of fifty.") The lyrics articulate the narrator's concern, if not outright dismay, at his having indeed become "invisible" after having been "for so many years the life and soul of the party." Nowadays, however, it appears that no matter what he does, he isn't really noticed by those around him, so caught up they are in the "chatter and hum" of life. Instead he finds that "the party's over and I'm not much use."
Not unusually for a PSB song, these lyrics lend themselves to various interpretations, any or all of which may be perfectly valid:
- The narrator's romantic partner takes him for granted and doesn't even seem to notice him anymore.
- He has become a virtual non-entity to a former romantic partner and his or her friends.
- His standing in society has faded dramatically for various reasons, but most notably "by the end of youth." That is, his growing older has made him less popular and interesting to those around him. (As noted above, the Boys themselves have referred to this aspect of the song in interviews.)
- He's the spirit of a dead man haunting a room, invisible to his still-living friends. (Neil acknowledged this interpretation as well in an interview in the September 2012 issue of Attitude. As he would later say, while the lyrics are inspired by the fact of growing old, they also describe "what it would be like to be a ghost.")
- He's a pop music star (or other prominent figure) who finds himself becoming essentially invisible to the arbiters of pop-culture tastes and success—again, largely because pop culture tends to be so intensely youth-oriented, while he's no longer young.
This last interpretation applies directly to the Pet Shop Boys' own circumstances, their having been for more than two decades highly successful in the U.K. and many other nations around the world—lives of the party in many ways. Yet mainstream pop/rock radio, with its relentless focus on youth and "the new," rarely plays their latest songs anymore. (Their previous single "Together" was virtually ignored on the radio and made it only up to #58 on the U.K. singles chart.) They're still around, still making great music, yet to increasingly large numbers of people they do in fact appear to be turning invisible: a very sad state of affairs.
The last stanza is particularly haunting:
It’s a journey so they say
But in this desert I was only a hazy, lazy mirage anyway
It's an acknowledgment, perhaps, of the Pet Shop Boys' always somewhat tenuous relationship to the pop mainstream, described remarkably as a "desert." After all, they've cast themselves more often than not in the role of outsiders, hard to pin down, what with their early "melancholy" and at times "contrary" image, not to mention their frequent use of costumes and lyrical personae. It's difficult for at least this commentator to view it otherwise.
Annotations
- "It's queer how gradually I've become invisible" – The word "queer" is totally appropriate here in its standard meaning—namely, "odd" or "strange"—in that the narrator is commenting on how strange he feels having become "invisible" to others. Yet neither is it inappropriate to consider its longstanding slang meaning (once universally regarded as an offensive slur, but embraced since the 1980s by many in its "target" community as a preferred label) to refer to people outside of heteronormative sexuality, including, among others, gay people. As noted above, Neil himself has observed that older gay men often find themselves becoming "invisible" to others, especially to younger gay men. This is very likely a sly reference on Neil's part, and not at all accidental given his own undoubtedly heightened awareness as a gay man of the history of that word.
- "Wrapped in my invisibility cloak" – This line seems to evoke the invisibility cloak that makes repeated appearances (and often plays a very important role) in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter novels and the movies based on them. But Neil avows to never having read any of the Harry Potter books nor seen any of the films, noting instead that he was inspired by memories of childhood fairy tales in which such cloaks also appear. It's therefore likely that Rowling and Neil simply drew upon the same legendary sources for their inspiration.
- "The party's over" – These words have served as the title of a variety of works by different artists, including several songs and albums, a book, a stage play, and a film. It's essentially a cliché, but a highly effective one: an Eliotesque objective correlative signifying the sadness of something light and wonderful having now faded to a memory. One of my site visitors, noting this line in conjunction with others surrounding it—"It's too late to find an excuse / The party's over and I'm not much use tonight"—has suggested that they may allude to the narrator's loss of energy (and possibly loss of libido as well) with the onset of age.
Mixes/Versions
Officially released
- Mixer: Andrew Dawson
- Album version (5:04)
- Instrumental (5:04)
- On the special limited Elysium two-disc CD and vinyl editions
Official but unreleased
- Mixer: Pet Shop Boys
- October 9, 2013 KCRW radio session version (4:44)
List cross-references
- The key signatures of selected PSB songs
- PSB songs for which the Boys have acknowledged the influence of specific tracks by other artists
- PSB songs that have been used in films and "non-musical" TV shows
- What it's about: Neil's succinct statements on what a song is "about"(but also see the concluding note at the end of the list)
- Singles that weren't included on Smash and the likely reasons for their exclusion
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