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Party Song

Writers - Tennant/Lowe/Casey/Finch
First released - 2006
Original album - Format
Producer - Pet Shop Boys
Subsequent albums - Release 2017 reissue Further Listening 2001-2004 bonus disc
Other releases - bonus track with single "Numb"

In light of the fact that it shares the status of "Numb" bonus track with "Bright Young Things," and that the Pet Shop Boys recorded the Noël Coward standard "The Party's Over Now" around the same time for a similar prospective purpose, there was early speculation that this might be that same song under a different title. That, however, proved not to be the case. It's a fast, raucous, synth-heavy, and rather discordant original that sounds every bit as much the "Party Song" that its title suggests.

As revealed in the May 2007 issue of the offical Pet Shop Boys Fan Club magazine Literally, the music originated with Chris and Neil working on a possible cover version of Nirvana's grunge-rock classic "Smells Like Teen Spirit," which had been suggested to them by Elton John. But they quickly turned it into a different song altogether, retaining only their bass line.

On first listen there seems little to interpret here. But that all depends on one very important question: just who is Neil's lyrical persona in this song? If it's Neil himself (or someone very much like him), then this song can probably be taken at face value simply as a celebration of "goodtime" music appropriate for a party. There is, after all, an important place in the world for such songs. But what if it's someone quite different from either of the Pet Shop Boys? Could it be a somewhat misguided fan complaining about the plethora of recent "non-party" PSB songs—such as "Numb" itself or, for that matter, the entire albums Release and/or Fundamental? Or perhaps it's a record company executive lodging a similar complaint, urging Chris and Neil to write and release more "party-oriented" material ("I'm gonna help you pick it"), presumably as a means toward greater popular appeal. (I can easily imagine such executives ignorantly believing that, in their earlier, more commercially successful days, the Pet Shop Boys cranked out mindless party songs by the score.)

Actually, as Neil states in the aforementioned issue of Literally, he wrote the lyrics from the perspective of "a guy at a club harassing the DJ to play a record he likes.… [T]hey hate it… because DJs just don't really operate like that nowadays, and haven't for many years. The song sympathizes with the DJ."

Part of the charm of this song lies in the very fact that it would seem to meet the criterion of being a "party song" while teasing us with its sarcasm. Once again, its the ambiguity that makes it most interesting. As they had done previously with "Between Two Islands," the Boys interpolate a bit of a pop classic into the song—in this case, KC and the Sunshine Band's 1975 disco standard "That's the Way (I Like It)." (Thus the co-writing credit for Harry Wayne Casey—"KC" himself—and Richard Finch.) Neil and Chris did this to show how the narrator gets his way in the end, with the DJ playing a party song after all.

Annotations

"… play those ones and twos" – A reference to sets of twin turntables, usually designated #1 and #2, used by DJs spinning vinyl records. Hence to "play ones and twos" is to work as a DJ.
"I drove along from Nice in my soft-top Rolls Royce Corniche" – Nice is a city in southern France, along that portion of the Mediterranean coast popularly known as "the French Riviera." Its beauty, mild climate, and resort industry has made it famous as a tourist destination—second (at least within France) only to Paris itself in that respect. The Corniche was a car model manufactured by the U.K. auto firm Rolls Royce from 1971 to 1996 and again briefly in 2000-2001. It (particularly its earlier models) has acquired "classic" status. The fact that it's a "soft-top" means it's a convertible. So the juxtaposition of Nice and the Corniche in the lyric indicate that the song's narrative persona (probably not Neil and/or Chris themselves) is quite well-to-do and perhaps even a bit decadent.
"Remember when we used to all get down and do the Hustle?" – The Hustle was a popular dance of the mid- to late-seventies "disco era," even having its "own song," so to speak (Van McCoy's 1975 #1 "The Hustle").
"That's the way I like it" – Quoted, as noted above, both lyrically and musically from the 1975 disco classic "That's the Way (I Like It)" by KC and the Sunshine Band. This, together with the aforementioned reference to the Hustle, indicates that the narrator of the song was in his youthful prime during the disco years and looks back on them quite nostalgically.
Also as described above, this track grew out of a contemplated cover of Nirvana's 1991-92 hit "Smells Like Teen Spirit." In the documentary Pet Shop Boys: A Life in Pop, famed deejay Richard Blade attributed the decline in the Pet Shop Boys' U.S. popularity at least in part to a pop-music paradigm shift in the wake of Nirvana's tremendous success with that song. One of my site visitors has suggested that "Party Song" might be viewed as something akin to "revenge," with the Boys perhaps implying that "Smells Like Teen Spirit" is, like "That's the Way (I Like It)," just another disposable party song, albeit for a subsequent generation. I'm not sure I wholly agree with that theory, but it's certainly well worth noting.

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