After the Event
Writers - Tennant/Lowe
First released - 2009
Original album - Format
Producer - Pet Shop Boys
Subsequent albums - Fundamental 2017 reissue Further Listening 2005-2007 bonus disc
Other releases - bonus track with single "Did You See Me Coming?"
This is one of many songs that were written by the Pet Shop Boys during the incredibly creative streak they enjoyed in early and mid-2005, when they composed most of the songs for Fundamental. Neil has described it as "one of those songs we keep changing. It's sort of good and sort of not-good." The Boys put off finishing it, however, until April 2009, when they pegged it as a potential bonus track for the "Did You See Me Coming?" single. After putting the final touches on it, Chris hailed it as "an epic song!"
"After the Event" comes across initially as rather transparent in some ways but truly enigmatic in others. The first verse describes a "typical day," with Neil rattling off a series of mundane observations of everyday urban life ("a snapshot of my home in London in the morning" says Neil in the Format booklet), backed by a relatively simple backing track. But then the chorus suggests something much more serious going on. Its denser music features—rather unusually for a PSB track—either an organ or a keyboard sampler employing the sound of an organ, playing a musicbox-like motif with, conversely, a somewhat sinister sound. The words of the chorus describe strong contrasting emotions: how something that may be taken as upsetting and threatening can, "after the event," leave people happy and smiling.
The second verse resumes the everyday observations. But we get the strong impression that it's all building up to something—presumably the "event" of the title. Then, after another even denser rendering of the chorus, comes the bridge—the promised "event":
Evening comes as a surprise
Suddenly someone dies
Everyone's over-reacting
With clichés and bad acting
Neil goes on to sing even more disapprovingly of the ensuing activities: of people leaving "flowers in their cellophane," public comments from the Queen, and other expressions that nevertheless add up to "drama without meaning." As it turns out, this, too, is "perfectly routine."
As the lyrics come right out and assert, the "event" is death. And perhaps not just any death. Could it be a school shooting in which a student responds to a ill-perceived threat ("Someone gets upset/Doesn’t hear the laughter/Takes it as a threat") with sudden, terrible violence? If so, are the Boys suggesting that's ordinary as well? In the modern world, unfortunately, such violence is indeed becoming all too commonplace. The blistering irony is that what once would have been truly shocking is now becoming as mundane as the morning paper. As a result, people react in an increasingly meaningless fashion with superficial gestures of collective grief: mourning as a pop-culture activity in which one puts flowers in their cellophane, stuffed animals, and other such twee tokens of sorrow in some public place because that's what one does under such circumstances. And then life goes on precisely as before.
The 9/11 attacks are another possibility. But then this song would seem in some ways to trivialize it, and I don't think that's what Neil and Chris have in mind at all.
Neil, however, later cleared up any confusion about the "type" of death he was referring to in this song. In his 2018 book One Hundred Lyrics and a Poem, he describes the subject as "the death of a famous person." The death of Princess Diana is simply the most internationally famous example of an event that triggered such a response. Neil has even personally cited it as such. But I seriously doubt that her death is what this song is specifically about. If so, the Boys are rather late commenting on it. No, I don't believe they're talking about any one particular "death event," but instead they're commenting on the phenomenon in general—though only they, of course, could say for sure.
It's worth noting, however, that in those One Hundred Lyrics and a Poem notes Neil goes on to refer to the "wallowing" described in this song. That one loaded word leaves little doubt that he disapproves.
As for the chorus, it reminds me of something the late Christian existentialist author Walker Percy once wrote—and I'll have to paraphrase here—about how people are never more alive than when they face something deadly, like an earthquake or a tornado. He noted how TV news interviewers often catch people smiling even as they describe horrific events. Yes, they're shocked or even terrified, but they're also in some ways thrilled. In the words of this song's chorus, they're "happy to be here," able to appreciate life itself more than ever before: "Blue skies heaven-sent."
Existentialism from the Pet Shop Boys? You bet.
List cross-references
- Evidence that death haunts "the Fundamental era"
- The key signatures of selected PSB songs
- The Pet Shop Boys' 10 greatest protest songs
- Real people mentioned by name or title in PSB lyrics
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.