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MusikIn April 2019 the Pet Shop Boys announced that they had once again collaborated with playwright Jonathan Harvey—with whom they had roughly two decades earlier worked to create the stage musical Closer to Heaven—to develop a new cabaret show titled Musik, which would premiere the following August 5 at the 2019 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, followed by a short run in London. In fact, it's a sequel of sorts to Closer to Heaven, presenting a one-woman performance by singer-actress Frances Barber in the role that she had originated in the earlier musical, the fictional German erstwhile pop star Billie Trix.
Roughly sixty minutes in length, it's built around what the PSB website proclaimed to be "an outrageous book by Jonathan Harvey" and features six Tennant-Lowe songs, including four brand new ones written specially for the show. The two older songs are Billie's big hit in the imaginary world of the musical, "Run, Girl, Run" and her best-known number from Closer to Heaven, "Friendly Fire." The songs newly composed for Musik are:
Only these four songs are covered below; for the two older ones, please see my Closer to Heaven page (although the version of "Friendly Fire" on Musik is in fact different from that in the earlier musical). All six songs were released on August 6, 2019 on what the official PSB website describes as an "EP," though so far there has been no physical release; the songs are available only as digital downloads and via streaming services.
In addition, the show includes a short bit of another new Tennant-Lowe song titled "Cover Me in Chamomile." So far the song itself apparently exists only as a fragment (briefly sung by "Billie" in the show) and hasn't yet been completed. It doesn't appear to exist in any recorded form at this time.
In an interview with The Guardian, Ms. Barber succinctly described the show's organization and its songs, noting that they reflect Billie's "music through the decades." She continued, "It starts off a bit Lotte Lenya ["Mongrel"], then she leaves Berlin for New York and there’s a song about Andy Warhol’s Factory ["Soup"], a Vietnam protest song ["Run, Girl, Run"], a disco anthem ["Ich bin Musik"], a torch song ["Friendly Fire"], and we end with an uplifting, lighters-in-the-air number ["For Every Moment"]."
Mongrel
by Frances Barber and Pet Shop Boys
Writers - Tennant/LoweFirst released - 2019
Original album - Musik (digital EP)
Producer - Pet Shop Boys
Subsequent albums - (none)
Other releases - (none)
The opening number of Musik concerns Billie's early life, and it's (in Frances Barber's words) "a bit Lotte Lenya"—referring, both thematically and stylistically, to the sort of legendary "Weimar Republic decadence" in which the equally legendary Miss Lenya thrived as a singer and actress. Ms. Barber, in the role of Billie, sings in a pronounced German accent of how she never knew her father, apparently a Russian soldier who had raped his mother in 1945 Berlin. Her mother, in turn, considered her a "curse." She therefore describes herself in thoroughly unflattering terms:
Me, the little mongrel
Born at the edge of hell
But her rough life growing up with an absent father and unloving mother made her strong: "Times were tough but I was tougher." So she takes grudging pride in her status as a self-proclaimed "bastard." In effect, it played a major role in making her what she is today.
In Annually 2020, the Boys revealed that this almost became the title song of the show. Posters had even been drawn up showing the show's title as Mongrel. But then they decided that it might be too ugly and disrespectful. Their collaborator Jonathan Harvey suggested Musik instead, and everyone agreed.
Annotations
- A "mongrel" is a mixed-breed dog (aka a "mutt") that belongs to no one breed and is not the result of intentional breeding. Billie's use of the term to describe herself—the unintentional product of two distinct nations, Germany and Russia—reveals a high degree of self-deprecation, especially since such terms as "mongrel" and "mutt" carry far more negative connotations than the more neutral term "mixed-breed." But, as the song's lyrics themselves indicate, she also views her "mongrel" background as a source of strength. It's no coincidence (and somewhat ironic) that mixed-breed dogs are very often stronger and less prone to genetically related health problems than purebred dogs.
List cross-references
Soup
by Frances Barber and Pet Shop Boys
Writers - Tennant/LoweFirst released -2019
Original album - Musik (digital EP)
Producer - Pet Shop Boys
Subsequent albums - (none)
Other releases - (none)
Stemming from an idea by Jonathan Harvey, this song deals with Billie's involvement in New York City with Andy Warhol—fictional, of course. The title is inspired by Andy Warhol's famed pop-art paintings of cans of soup. Yet it's not pop art that Billie focuses on here. Rather, it's the fact that, for a starving artist, soup can offer the inexpensive difference between life and death:
If you're feeling hungry, alone, and angry
Heat up a little can of soup
It won't let you down
Aside from that chorus, much of the lyric simply lists different types of soup, including chicken noodle, minestrone, cream of mushroom, clam chowder, split pea, and cream of tomato, among others. Toward the end, however, Billie goes so far as to suggest obliquely that Warhol's famous soup-can painting arose from a dearth of ideas as to anything else to paint—a brazen but quite amusing conceit.
Annotations
As noted above, the lyrics of this song are inspired by Campbell's Soup Cans, a series of canvases produced in 1961 and 1962 by Andy Warhol. Each of the 32 canvases—one for each variety of canned soup produced at that time by the Campbell Soup Company—measures 20 x 16 inches, resulting in each can of soup appearing roughly five times larger than its actual "real-life" size. This series became one of Warhol's most famous works and played a major role in establishing his reputation as an artist. It also proved both iconic and hugely influential in the burgeoning "pop art" movement of the 1960s.
- "When you've no idea, try this panacea" – The word "panacea," meaning a cure-all, an actual or at least presumed solution for all ills, is unusual enough that many fans didn't initially understand it. It comes from the Greek words πᾶν (pan, meaning "all") and ἄκος (akos, meaning "remedy").
List cross-references
- This song doesn't appear in any of my lists
Ich bin Musik
by Frances Barber and Pet Shop Boys
Writers - Tennant/LoweFirst released - 2019
Original album - Musik (digital EP)
Producer - Pet Shop Boys
Subsequent albums - (none)
Other releases - (none)
Meant in the context of the show to have been recorded by Billie Trix in 1978, during the height of the disco era, this upbeat number is very much in that style, especially when the synth-horns kick in during the second half. (As Neil has explained, "We’ve written songs that help to tell her story… that she recorded at the time," adding, "It’s fun to write in different styles.") On first hearing, its lyrics seem reminiscent of Barry Manilow's big 1975 hit "I Write the Songs" (written by then-former-but-later-again Beach Boy Bruce Johnston), almost as if Billie were adopting the persona of Music itself. That wouldn't be surprising in a song with a title that translates as "I Am Music." But, as it soon becomes clear, she's not actually singing from the perspective of a personified Music but instead is suggesting that music is so much a part of her life that she completely embodies it. In effect, music possesses her.
The chorus includes the lines—
I am music
Music is me
It's all that I live for
It's setting me free
A few lines later, the chorus concludes:
Ich bin Musik
Taxi zum Klo
This is extremely curious considering that Taxi zum Klo ("Taxi to the loo" or "Taxi to the john") is the title of a notorious but well-received 1981 German gay cult film about a Berlin school teacher's sexually promiscuous nightlife. What's the connection—if any and it's not just an outrageous non sequitur? Maybe it's meant to suggest that Billie has become a gay icon at this stage of her career. But I think there's a little more to it than that.
The next verse finds Billie emoting over the transcendent capacity of music, how it lifts her beyond the ordinary; it makes her feel like a "queen," it enables her to "reach for the moon." On the other hand, the recurring line "How low can you go?" indicates that music can also have an effect quite the opposite from being uplifting as it serves as the soundtrack to some of the more decadent aspects of the "disco scene" of the late seventies. "Taxi to the john" indeed.
Annotations
- This song contains several lines in German:
- Ich bin Musik - German, "I am music."
- Musik bin ich - German, "I am music" (again; the correct translation depends on the pronouns used, not their position in the phrase).
- Taxi zum Klo - German, "Taxi to the loo" or its American equivalent, "Taxi to the john." While Taxi zum Klo has been translated "Taxi to the toilet," the German word Klo is more informal, even somewhat vulgar; a better German equivalent to the more formal English term "toilet" would be Toilette. The slang terms "loo" or "john" are therefore better English-language translations of Klo.
- Ohne mich ist es Nichts - German, "It's nothing without me," although a native speaker of the language has informed me that this is a bit ungrammatical—that it should properly be "Ohne mich ist sie Nichts" (my emphasis).
- Musik bin mich - Apparently an attempt at "Music is me" in German, but I've been told by a native speaker of the language that it doesn't actually make any grammatical sense in the language, coming across more like "Music am myself" in translation.
- Ich bin Musik - German, "I am music."
- One can't help but feel that this song—at least its title, if nothing else—may have been inspired/influenced by the number "Ich bin Kunst" (meaning "I am art") from Boy George's 2002 stage musical Taboo. In that show, "Ich bin Kunst" is sung by the character Leigh Bowery, based on the legendary performance artist of the same name.
- At the very start of the song is a "treated" male voice intoning the word "music." It sounds as though it may be sampled from "Music for Boys," in which case it's very likely Chris Lowe's own modified/manipulated voice. Without confirmation from the PSB camp, however, this can only be speculation.
List cross-references
For Every Moment
by Frances Barber and Pet Shop Boys
Writers - Tennant/LoweFirst released - 2019
Original album - Musik (digital EP)
Producer - Pet Shop Boys
Subsequent albums - (none)
Other releases - (none)
The final song of Musik has been described by Ms. Barber as "an uplifting, lighters-in-the-air number" and by Neil as "a surprisingly life-affirming song… in which [Billie] sums up her philosophy of life." The chorus summarizes it quite nicely:
You've got to live your life for every moment
From the shock of arrival
In a new world we share
To the pain of survival
I've always been there
Better still are the first lines of the second verse, which offer succinct advice to those who would draw strength from her example:
You gotta look ahead
Don't fear the future
Bury the past or make it your own
Even more succinctly, it's a matter of establishing your own place in the universe: "Create a world outside your window," adding, "Take it from me." Billie's advice comes from hard-fought experience.
During a spoken interlude, Billie describes the uncertainty of her (and, by implication, everyone else's) future. She steadfastly asserts it will see "A small step for me, a giant leap for art," parodying Neil Armstrong's immortal words when he first set foot on the moon. In other words, in her own personal way, she sees her life's journey as every bit as epic as humanity's first venture to another world. In a very real sense, that's personally true for every single one of us.
It's worth noting that Chris and Neil originally wrote this song in 2003 and had planned to record it as a duet with Elton John, but it turns out he didn't much care for it musically. The Boys worked on it further in 2005 and offered it to the Swedish group Alcazar, who broke up before they could take it on. With two strikes against it, so to speak, it languished in limbo until our musical heroes finally decided to repurpose it for Musik. Also noteworthy is that the 2024 London revival of Closer to Heaven, "For Every Moment" replaced "Vocal" (which had itself replaced "Positive Role Model") as the final song, although "Vocal" still appeared earlier in the show.
List cross-references
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