PSB songs with lyrics that don't contain the title
This list doesn't include instrumentals ("Casting a Shadow," "Kazak," "KDX 125," "The Living Daylights," and "The Noise"), which of course by their very nature don't have lyrics and therefore can't include the title. This includes tracks like "God Willing" and "One Hit Wonder," which have wordless vocals and are therefore also, in essence, instrumentals.
- All or Nothing
Except for snippets of Neil singing "And there she goes" in the background, the lyrics of this song are almost entirely in Japanese, and the few smatterings of English don't include the title. Of course, it's distinctly possible (even likely) that a Japanese translation of the words "all or nothing" appears in the lyrics, but there's no doubt that the English title itself never appears. - Axis
Though very close to an instrumental, this track does include some vocals with often (though not always) discernable words, such as "electric energy." But the word "axis" isn't among them. - Between Two Islands
- The Calm Before the Storm
- Cricket Wife
"Cricket wives" plural are mentioned once in the lyrics, but not "cricket wife" singular. - Decide
- Diddly Squat
- The Dictator Decides
- Fugitive
- Je
T'aime…Moi Non Plus
True, it wasn't written by Neil and Chris, but they did record it, and in a rendition that doesn't include the French title (whereas the original did), so it merits inclusion here. It does, however, include the Boys' English translation of the title: "I love you… but not more than me." - K-hole
- Legacy
- Living in the Past
- Love etc.
The "etc." occurs nowhere in the lyrics. - The Night I Fell in Love
- Paninaro '95
This may be trifling on my part, but although the word "paninaro" occurs prominently in this track, the number 95 never appears in the lyrics. Nor would you expect it to. - Postscript
- The Resurrectionist
While the word "resurrectionist" appears repeatedly in the lyrics, it's always "a resurrectionist"—never "the resurrectionist." - Transfer
- Vampires
Although the word "vampire" (singular) is used repeatedly, "vampires" (plural) appears only in the title. - Viva la Vida
The lyrics of neither Coldplay's original nor the Boys' cover (which they mash with their own "Domino Dancing") contain the title—Spanish for, literally, "Live the life" although, more idiomatically, "Long live life" or even "Hooray for life!" - The Way Through the Woods
Rudyard Kipling didn't include the title in his poem (though he came close by saying "the road through the woods"), so the PSB song based on the poem doesn't include the title, either. - Wedding in Berlin
- Where the Streets Have No Name (I Can't Take
My Eyes Off You)
Not only does Neil never actually sing the title of the "I Can't Take My Eyes Off You" portion of this track (he comes close, but not exactly that), but even in the original version Frankie Valli sings "Can't take my eyes off of you" rather than the precise title, "I Can't Take My Eyes Off You."
And perhaps, depending on how you look at it—
- I
Don't Know What You Want But I Can't Give It Any More
I know the "official" printed lyrics include the repeated title verbatim in the chorus. But, at least to my ears, I never once hear Neil singing the pronoun "I" before "don't know what you want but I can't give it any more." Maybe he "clips" it so much that it's barely noticeable. - What Are We Going to Do About the Rich?
Again, the official printed lyrics and the official lyric video employ the title in the lyrics "as is." But Neil clearly sings, each and every time, "gonna," the common "elided" form of the words "going to": "What are we gonna do about the rich?" It's a trifling enough distinction, however, that I can't bring myself to elevate it above this "perhaps" level.
By the way, I don't include "Saturday Night Forever" in this list because, although the words "Saturday night" and "forever" are separated by punctuation and appear on separate lines in the printed lyrics, they do appear back-to-back and are sung in that sequence: "(Saturday night, Saturday night) forever and ever."
I'm also not counting "A Certain 'Je Ne Sais Quoi'" despite the fact that, whenever Neil sings that line, he inserts the interjection "um" right after the word "certain." So the title verbatim never actually appears. But including it in this list on that account would just seem so darn picky—as if I would also have included it if, instead of suggestively intoning "um," he had silently paused just long enough to lick his lips.
Finally, they're not really "PSB songs," so they don't qualify for this "list proper," but—
- The lyrics of Chris's remake of the old New Order track "Subculture" with Stop Modernists don't contain that song's title, either. Then again, that sort of thing is hardly unusual for New Order, who are almost as famous for their lyrics-without-the-titles as the Pet Shop Boys are for bestowing single-word titles on their albums.
- Neil's pre-PSB demo "All Things to All Men" comes close to using the title in its lyrics—the chorus employs the line "All kinds of things to all men" (my emphasis)—but never the exact title, so it deserves mention here as well.
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