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My "baker's dozen" of favorite PSB quatrains

I consider Neil, who writes the large majority lyrics for the Pet Shop Boys—not all of their lyrics, to be sure, but undoubtedly the very large lion's share—to be one of the finest pop-music lyricists of his generation. In fact, I love PSB lyrics every bit as much as I love their music. So trying to specify a small selection of those lyrics as my personal favorites is challenging, to say the least. Nevertheless, here's my crack at my "Top 13," aided by my decision to limit my choices to quatrains: four adjacent lines with a distinct rhyming pattern, usually either A-B-C-B or A-B-A-B. In a few instances, however, I've picked "double couplets" that might be viewed as quatrains with an A-A-B-B rhyme scheme. (If that's cheating, so be it.) Of course, this excludes a number of other superb lyrical segments, including standalone couples, triplets, other less conventional rhyming groups and, to be sure, other quatrains. It's simply easier to come up with a list of just a "baker's dozen" with the limitation.

I list them here in approximate chronological order based on when the pertinent songs were first released—not in my order of preference, which I'd be hard-pressed to nail down, anyway:

From "Rent":

You phoned me in the evening on hearsay
And bought me caviar
You took me to a restaurant off Broadway
To tell me who you are
From "If There Was Love":

There's a hole in the sky
As distant and vast
As our moral vacuum
And growing as fast
From "Being Boring":

But I sat back and looking forward
My shoes were high and I had scored
I'd bolted through a closing door
And I would never find myself feeling bored
Again, from "Being Boring":

I never dreamt that I would get to be
The creature that I always meant to be
But I thought in spite of dreams
You'd be sitting somewhere here with me
From "DJ Culture":

Now, as a matter of pride
Indulge yourself, your every mood
No feast days or fast days
Or days of abstinence intrude

From "To Step Aside":

Or will spring bring rain and summer burn?
Will tears at last precede the turn
From summer warmth to sudden cold
As certainly as growing old?
From "The View from Your Balcony":

In a romance of the old school
If you lived in this tower block
You'd be a victim of the system
A subject for punk rock
From "Closer to Heaven":

In my hopes
Paradise is real
Horoscopes
Can't forecast how we'll feel
From "I Didn't Get Where I Am Today":

I've been called repressed
A poet, a pest
I didn't get where I am today
Without getting in someone's way
From "The Resurrectionist":

We had a drink, then a couple more
At the King of Denmark and the Fortune of War
A handsome lad lay in a Hansom cab
Soon to be a stiff 'un on the slab
From "King of Rome":

The desert moon, a new lagoon
We glide upon the surface
Night falls fast, no shadows cast
Arriving without purpose*
From "Into Thin Air":

Too much ugly talking
Too many bad politicians
We need some practical dreamers
And maybe a few magicians
From "Will-o-the-wisp":

The U1 is such a party train
From Uhland to Warschauerstraße
Emerging from below past Nollendorfplatz
In search of love and laughter**

*I realize that these lines from "King of Rome" scan as six lines with an A-A-B-C-C-B rhyme scheme, and are printed that way on the Pet Shop Boys' official website. But considering their brevity, I personally feel it also scans quite nicely as an A-B-C-B quatrain with internal rhymes in the first and third lines—and, technically, a "flawed" (surface/purpose) but nevertheless highly effective rhyme in the second and fourth lines.

**This is an outrageously flawed quatrain from the perspective of both metrics and rhyme (Warschauerstraße/laughter). But it's so brazenly offbeat and creative that I simply can't resist including it. Besides, demonstrably skilled artists have leave to "break the rules."

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