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What it's about: Neil's succinct statements on what a song is "about"

The following songs are those for which I've found instances of Neil making a succinct one-sentence explanation (or part of a single sentence) of what that song is about, beginning with the words "It's about…." or some close variation, such as "It is about…," "This song is about….," or "The lyrics are about…." In other words, the key word I'm looking for is "about." In a few cases the sentence or clause actually begins with a transitional word like "And" or "Well," which I'm disregarding for the sake of this list. In those and other cases where the sentence as a whole doesn't begin with "It's," I've capitalized the I in "it's" as if it were indeed the start of the sentence. When the subject of the sentence or clause isn't actually "It's," I replace the actual wording with "[It's]," in brackets like that, to indicate the adjustment. Also, in many instances I've found more than one "about" pronouncement by Neil about a song, but rather than list them all, I simply quote the one that I prefer—webmaster's prerogative.

• All Over the World

  "[It's] about the universality of pop music—how you hear it all over the world."

• Always on My Mind

  "It's about someone who's a tactless twat and I've often felt that about myself."

• At Rock Bottom

  "[It's] about the opioid crisis in America, people dying of drugs."

• Baby

  "[It's] about a girl.… [who] still quite likes [a boy] but she doesn't want to be messed around by him again."

• Beautiful People

  "[It's] about an English woman waiting for a bus."

• Before

  "It's about someone I know."

• Being Boring

  "It's about a friend of mine who died of AIDS, and so it's about our lives when we were teenagers and how we moved to London, and I suppose me becoming successful and him becoming ill."

• Bet She's Not Your Girlfriend

  "[It's] about me going out with a very beautiful girl at school."*

  *On another occasion Neil said, "[It's] about George Michael." But the two statements are more complementary than contradictory. It's about both of them.

• Birthday Boy

  "[It's] about the idea of children dying for our sins or prejudices and in doing so they become like Jesus."

• Blue on Blue

  "It's about being with your lover by the sea—the blue of the sky and the blue of the sea."

• Boy Strange

  "It's about someone looking at this boy and thinking how much they fancy them or whatever, and you just know he's trouble."

• The Boy Who Couldn't Keep His Clothes On

  "It's about a friend who would always take his shirt off on the dancefloor."

• Brick England

  "It's about how cities come and go."

• Bright Young Things

  "It's about them all being off their heads, drunk and on drugs."*

  *In the context of this quote, the "them" to whom Neil is referring is Stephen Tennant, Nancy Cunard, and the other young London socialites of the 1920s who are the subjects of the song.

• Building a Wall

  "It's about my childhood."

• Burning the Heather

  "It's about a stranger coming into a village somewhere and he's quite full of himself, and he's evidently quite a troubled person."

• Can You Forgive Her?

  "It's about a closet queen."

• Casanova in Hell

  "It's about Casanova."

• Closer to Heaven

  "[It's] about how you can almost be there, without getting there."

• Confidential

  "[It's] about a Tory sex scandal—it's our second song to be inspired by the same person's misbehaviour, the first one being 'In Private.'"

• Cricket Wife

  "It's… about my parents."

• Decadence

  "[It's] about a former friend, saying that he doesn't care about anyone, he just cares about money."

• Delusions of Grandeur

  "It's about fascism."

• Did You See Me Coming?

"[It's] about someone walking into a bar and seeing someone and thinking, 'God, I really fancy them.'"

• A Different Point of View

  "It's about people not believing each other."

• Disappointed

  "[It's] about not being disappointed."

• Disco Potential

  "[It's] about Tamara Beckwith."

• Discoteca

  "[It's] about someone discovering they're HIV positive.… [and] dealing with it ."

• DJ Culture

  "[It's] about how facile and pretentious modern life is."

• Domino Dancing

  "[It's] about jealousy."

• Don Juan

  "[It's] about the Balkans in the 1930s."

• Dreaming of the Queen

  "[It's] about AIDS."

• Dreamland

  "It's about the refugee crisis from the point of view of a refugee."

• Ego Music

  "It's about these things modern pop stars say."

• Electricity

  "[It's] about a drag queen."

• E-mail

  "[It's] about being unsure of someone's feelings for you."

• A Face Like That

  "[It's] about sexual attraction."

• Falling

  "It's about realising you're still in love with someone when you've finished with them."

• Flamboyant

  "It's about a minor celebrity obsessed with getting as much press attention as possible by dressing outrageously."

• Fluorescent

  "It's about a model like Kate Moss, a very glamorous person."

• Footsteps

  "[It's] about a fear of the dark which can be conquered by somebody you love being there."

• For Your Own Good

  "It's about someone being at home waiting for their loved one to come and see them."

• Forever in Love

  "It's about falling in love for the first time."

• The Forgotten Child

  "[It's] about a refugee who's gone missing while fleeing for safety with her family."

• The Former Enfant Terrible

  "It's about a 'sixties British rock star, and about the typical trajectory in show business—Noël Coward went through the same thing—from enfant terrible to national treasure."

• Fugitive

  "It's about a terrorist—a terrorist whose ideology is that he believes that by killing the enemy he's going to go to heaven, which is what we've been led to believe some Islamic terrorists think."

• The Ghost of Myself

  "It's about when I lived in Chelsea and was going out with this girl, and it's actually about when we broke up."

• Girls Don't Cry

  "[It's] about a girl who I think is maybe a lesbian, but actually we don't know what's happened really."

• Give Stupidity a Chance

  "[It's] about the poor quality of political leadership in the modern world."

• Go West

  "It's about finding a promised land."

• Groovy

  "It's about someone who lives to be outrageous."

• Happiness Is an Option

  "[It's] about all sorts of grim experienes, and about not allowing them to bring you completely down and make you totally depressed."

• Happy People

  "It's about the contrast between a happy life at home—or a personal life—and then the kind of nightmare of the outside world, as it sometimes feels."

• Hit and Miss

  "It's about the end of a relationship, looking back at the start of the relationship."

• Hit Music

  "It's about how sex had gone out of the entire nightclubbing ethos because of AIDS."

• Hoping for a Miracle

"It's about Tony Blair."

• Hold On

  "[It's] about the recession."

• Home and Dry

  "[It's] about fear of flying, that sort of anxiety, knowing that someone is flying across the Atlantic at night."

• How Can You Expet to Be Taken Seriously?

  "It's about loads of pop stars."

• How I Learned to Hate Rock 'n' Roll

  "[It's] about the things about rock 'n' roll that I don't like—all the pomposity and hypocrisy and the rest of it."

• I Cried for Us

  "It's about Kate McGarrigle leaving her husband, Loudon Wainwright."

• I Don't Know What You Want But I Can't Give It Any More

  "It's about the break-up of a relationship—about the end of a relationship between two people, when they are no longer communicating."

• I Don't Wanna

  "[It's] about a boy who feels too ugly and unsexy to want to go out, so he stays in his room, being miserable."

• I Get Along

  "It's about Tony Blair sacking you."*

  *Neil said this directly to former U.K. cabinet minister Peter Mandelson ("you") over the telephone while being interviewed by him for GQ magazine.

• I Get Excited (You Get Excited Too)

"It's about being in New York and being really excited about it."

• I Want a Dog

  "It's about loneliness."

• I Want a Lover

  "It's about standing at a corner of a nightclub and everyone's leaving and you've seen someone you fancy, and who's going to make the first approach?"

• I Want to Wake Up

  "It's about unrequited love."

• I Wouldn't Normally Do This Kind of Thing

  "[It's] about a reserved Englishman, falling in love and going bonkers."

• I'm with Stupid

  "It's about George Bush and Tony Blair."

• If Looks Could Kill

  "It's about reacting to a bitchy person."

• In Denial

  "[It's] about a father and his daughter."

• In His Imagination

  "[It's] about a boy who works in a bread factory in South Wales on the night shift, and he's really bored and he doesn't really fit in."

• In Private

  "It's about someone having an affair with a politician and being found out."

• In Slow Motion

  "It's about walking through a smaller American city, somewhere like Milwaukee."

• Inside

  "It's about aging, and about inner beauty."

• Inside a Dream

  "[It's] about dreaming."

• Into Thin Air

  "[It's] about escape and flying."

• Invisible

  "[It's] about growing old and how when you're older you're invisible: obviously this might not be my experience but it is true for people."

• It Always Comes as a Surprise

"It's about the excitement at the start of a love affair, when someone seems magical and different."

• It Couldn't Happen Here

  "[It's] about how AIDS affected the gay community, and the way people reacted to the gay community and suggested it was almost as though the gay community had been too visible and had themselves to blame."

• It Must Be Obvious

  "[It's] about being in love with someone and everyone knows apart from the person you're in love with."

• It's a Sin

  "It's about being brought up as a Catholic."

• It's Alright

  "It's about the power of music."

• Jack the Lad

  "[It's] about being an individual, daring to do what you want to do."

• Jealousy

  "It's about jealousy."*

  *Said (with a bit of a chuckle) during an interview in response to the question "What's it about?"

• King of Rome

  "[It's] about someone roaming the world to get away from some tragic love affair."

• King's Cross

  "[It's] about Thatcherism.… a metaphor for the people left behind by Thatcherism."

• The Last to Die

  "[It's] about the Iraq War when I sing it."

• Later Tonight

  "It's about sex and class."

• Leaving

  "It's about a man and a woman, and that the woman is leaving and the man doesn't want her to leave, and he's explaining why he doesn't really believe that the relationship is over."

• Left to My Own Devices

  "[It's] about… this person [who] goes through life always doing what he wanted to do."

• Legacy

  "It's about a politician losing his power."*

  *The specific politician in question is U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair.

• Liberation

  "[It's] about how, in a way, a relationship is trapping you, but it makes you feel free."

• Listening

  "[It's] about someone who's uncommunicative because they've had some trauma in their early life."

• London

  "It's about two Russian soldiers who desert the Russian army and escape to London, where they indulge in a life of crime."

• Love Comes Quickly

  "[It's] about how you can suddenly fall in love with someone and you can't help it."

• Love etc.

  "[It's] about the celebrity wealth thing."

• Love Is a Bourgeois Construct

  "[It's] about a guy whose wife—or whatever, girlfriend—left him, and he's led a very respectable bourgeois life."

• Love Is a Catastrophe

  "It's about the end of a possibility, the end of hope."

• Luna Park

  "It’s about why people enjoy being scared and whether that is used politically."

• A Man Could Get Arrested

  "It's about sexual frustration."

• Memory of the Future

  "[It's] about something that seems predestined.… that future happiness seems so inevitable that you can already remember it."

• Metamorphosis

  '[It's] about growing up gay and realizing what you are and how you are going to deal with it and all that stuff."

• Minimal

  "[It's] about minimalism."

• Miracles

  "It's about how, when you're in love with someone, they have a kind of magic and they seem to transform everything."

• More Than a Dream

  "[It's] about society or it could be talking about the relationship between two people—which is what it really is, actually."

• My October Symphony

  "[It's] about the changes in Russia."

• Nervously

  "[It's] about the sexual trepidation you feel about who is going to make the first move, when they come back to your flat and that kind of thing."

• New Boy

  "It's about two girls on the phone in some suburban area, they see a new boy in town and are talking about him."

• A New Life

  "[It's] about a woman leaving her husband, going to get a new life."

• New York City Boy

  "[It's] about a teenager living in the suburbs of New York—Brooklyn or Queens* or Westchester or somewhere like that.… It's a song about how fab New York is."

  *Brooklyn and Queens aren't actually "suburbs of New York" at all, but rather part and parcel of New York City. So Neil is apparently thinking specifically of Manhattan when he speaks of "New York."

• The Night I Fell in Love

  "It's about a young rap fan who goes to see his hero, and something very surprising happens to him."

• Night Song

  "It's about the closeness of the father and the daughter."*

  *Said by Neil in reference to characters in the play My Dad's a Birdman, for which the Boys co-wrote this song.

• Nightlife

  "It's about going out, clubbing, from a rather romantic perspective."

• No Excuse

  "[It's] about abusive behaviour."

• Nothing Has Been Proved

  "[It's] about the Profumo Affair."

• Numb

  "[It's] about her mother dying of cancer."*

  *"Her" refers to the mother of the song's writer, Diane Warren.

• One in a Million

  "It's about your lover wanting to break up, and you don't want to, and you realize that it's a hugely important decision that you're going to try and change their mind about."

• One More Chance

  "It's about being in New York at night."

• One Night

  "[It's] about making the most of what's available."

• The Only One

  "It's about someone who's in love and they're wondering whether the person they're in love with can be trusted."

• Only the Dark

  "[It's] about two people on a sofa."

• Oppportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money)

  "[It's] about two people who've formed a relationship, not so much to make money, but because they're lonely."

• Pandemonium

  "[It's] about Pete Doherty, but it's a bit of a cartoon version obviously."*

  *Neil noted that this song is sung from the perspective of English model Kate Moss, who was for a time engaged to musician Pete Doherty of the U.K. band The Libertines.

• The Performance of My Life

  "[It's] about the gap between the celebrity surface and reality, and the consolation of work."

• The Pop Kids

  "It’s about a friend of mine who moved from Birmingham to go to Kings College in London to study history and he made friends with a girl there."

• Positive Role Model

  "It's about people going into rehab, which is such an issue nowadays."

• A Powerful Friend

  "It's about a sort of kept boy who's got a powerful friend—a politician, maybe."

• Psychological

  "[It's] about how you imagine things, of how being afraid of a directionless terrorism in way is like being afraid of the dark."

• Radiophonic

  "It's about someone coming back wrecked from a nightclub and not being able to get to sleep."

• A Red Letter Day

  "It's about waiting for someone to tell you they love you."

• Rent

  "It's about someone who's given up their life fundamentally for the pleasure of another person in return for security and they're wondering at the end of the day whether it was such a good idea. "

• Requiem in Denim and Leopardskin

  "[It's] about the funeral of a friend of ours, our make-up artist Lynne Easton, who suddenly died, which was a great shock to us and indeed to everyone else who knew her."

• The Resurrectionist

  "It's about the people who used to dig up graves and sell the bodies."*

  *In the context of this quote, it's not absolutely clear whether Neil was specifically referring to this song or to the book that inspired it. But it's accurate in either case.

• Reunion

  "[It's] about some friends getting together after a long time and having a reunion."

• Saturday Night Forever

  "It's about picking somebody up in a club, the twist being that it has a cynicism about it."

• Say It to Me

  "It's about a relationship with someone who doesn't say very much, someone with rather an elusive personality."

• Screaming

  "It's about an obsessive fan, written from the obsessive fan's point of view."

• Searching for the Face of Jesus

  "[It's] about Elvis Presley, in the fat years."

• Sexy Northerner

  "It's about the phenomenon of seeing guys from the North in clubs."

• Shameless

  "[It's] about celebrity culture."

• She Pops

  "[It's] about a studious and shy young girl who turns out to be a brilliant dancer and body-popper.'

• Shopping

  "[It's] about the government selling off nationalised industries."

• Single

  "It's about a Euro businessman, very glib, very concerned with his own privileges, trying to pick up chicks or something."

• So Hard

  "It's about the problem of being monogamous; wanting to be in a loving and monogamous relationship but being tempted away from it."

• So Sorry, I Said

  "It's about a woman in an unhappy relationship, possibly an abusive relationship, who realizes that she always gives in."

• The Sodom and Gomorrah Show

  "It's about how the world will not be destroyed if we all love each other."

• Some Speculation

  "It's about speculation and sexual infidelity."

• Somebody Else's Business

  "It's about a placid man dealing with this angry girlfriend."

• Somewhere

  "[It's] about promised lands."

  *Chris has also said exactly the same thing about it.

• Suburbia

  "It's about a riot happening in some decaying suburb."

• The Survivors

  "It's about growing old, and that when you've reached a certain age you've survived this far, you're still alive."

• That's My Impression

"It's about jealousy, a corny pop lyric about how your lover is out there somewhere, trying to pick someone else up."

• This Must Be the Place I Waited Years to Leave

  "[It's] about a dream I used to have that I was back in school doing exams in the sixth form, and thinking, 'How can I possibly be back at school?'"

• This Used to Be the Future

  "[It's] about how what were futuristic ideas get worn out, or maybe just worn—so that what used to seem utopian now just seems shabby."

• Time on My Hands

  "It's about being bored."

• To Face the Truth

  "It's about lying in bed and your lover's somewhere else."

• To Speak Is a Sin

  "It's about a sad gay bar."

• To Step Aside

  "[It's] about faith."

• Together

  "It's about two people who are going to do something very exciting—about the impact of two people."

• Tonight Is Forever

  "It's about kids going to Heaven, the nightclub."

• Transparent

  "[It's] about sincerity—it's saying: if you could see through me, you'd be able to see how sincere I am."

• The Truck-Driver and His Mate

  "[It's] about male bonding."

• Twenty-something

  "It's about being twenty-something in London specifically."

• Two Divided by Zero

  "It's about running away."

• Undertow

  "It's about someone getting into a relationship they know is going to be bad for them and they just can't help it."

• Up Against It

  "It's about post-war Britain; about how people, at the end of the Second World War, thought they were going to build a new Jerusalem, and about how, in every era that you can remember, everyone's being told to tighten their belts for some future reward."

• Vampires

  "[It's] about people who just live for the night."

• The View from Your Balcony

  "It's about a friend of mine who lived in a council flat in Bermondsey, South London, on the twentieth floor with a fabulous view over the Thames."

• Violence

  "It's about Northern Ireland."

• Viva la Vida

  "[It's] about 'St. Peter won't call my name.'"

• Vocal

  "It's about what music does to people."

• Vulnerable

  "It's about a woman I know."

• Was It Worth It?

  "[It's] about whether it's worth falling in love.… It's about me meeting a boyfriend."

• We All Feel Better in the Dark

  "[It's] about going to a rave."

• We're All Criminals Now

  "It's about us feeling like we're being treated as criminals with the surveillance culture."

• We're the Pet Shop Boys

  "[It's] about us, but it's not by us."

• West End Girls

  "[It's] about class, about rough boys getting a bit of posh."

• What Are We Going to Do About the Rich?

  "[It's] about [the] extreme rich—oligarchs and that kind of thing."

• What Have I Done to Deserve This?

  "It's about two middle-aged professionals and the woman is the more powerful person.… They've split up by this point and both of them are miserable."

• What Keeps Mankind Alive?

  "[It's] about cannibalism and torture."

• Why Don't We Live Together?

  "[It's] about about settling down, compromise."

• Wiedersehen

  "[It's] about the Jewish Austrian novelist Stefan Zweig fleeing his country before the Nazis' arrival."

• Will-o-the-wisp

"It's about being on the underground, U-Bahn in Berlin."

• Winner

  "[It's] about success being so fleeting that you need to enjoy it for that second because it's not going to last."

• Yesterday, When I Was Mad

  "[It's] about the reaction we got on tour, about being damned with faint praise."

• You Are the One

  "[It's] about going to the lakes and then going back into the city in the afternoon and going to see a film."

• Young Offender

  "It's about someone old and someone young."

• Your Funny Uncle

"[It's] about one of my best friends who died of AIDS."

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And then there are the rare—very rare—instances of Chris being the one to weigh in on the meaning of a song, saying what it's "about":

• Decide

  "It's about the end of a relationship."

• Go West

  "[It's] about an idealistic gay utopia.… but looking back in hindsight it wasn't the utopia they all thought it would be."

• I Want a Lover

"[It's] about turning off the lights and it all getting a bit steamy."

• Invisible

"It's about being finished."

• Later Tonight

  "It's all about turning off the lights and it all getting a bit steamy."

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