Boy Strange
Writers - Tennant/Lowe
First released - 1999
Original album - Nightlife
Producer - Pet Shop Boys, Rollo
Subsequent albums - (none)
Other releases - (none)
This song evolved from an earlier instrumental piece the Boys had written titled "Playing in the Streets," part of which can still be heard in this track's instrumental lead-in. "It sounds like kraut rock," Chris has noted, to which Neil replied, "A bit like Bowie, I think." Neil has often noted the profound influence David Bowie had on him in his youth, and musically this track betrays the Bowie influence perhaps more than any other they've recorded (that is, unless you count their collaborative remix of Bowie's own "Hallo Spaceboy"). Note how acoustic guitar, piano, and phase-distortion are used—very Bowiesque. This would have been very much at home on any of Bowie's albums from the early 1970s.
The
lyrics deal with the way in which we sometimes become romantically, sexually,
or otherwise intertwined with people who ultimately prove unhealthy to us. As
Neil told an interviewer around the time the album came out, "The new song
'Boy Strange' may sound gay, but the inspiration was two girls I know whose lives
have been ruined by picking up men who are gorgeous, who then went on to
An intriguing but purely speculative possible connection is with Joni Mitchell's song "A Strange Boy," which concerns the narrator's relationship with a somewhat immature young man who simultaneously excites and annoys her. But it's perhaps not such an unlikely connection when you consider that Neil has cited Joni's album on which it appears, Hejira, as among his personal favorites.
Another promising hypothesis has been posed by one of my site visitors, who suggests that the designation "Boy Strange" may be an amalgam of the names Boy George and Steve Strange—lead singers of the bands Culture Club and Visage, respectively—both of whom were icons of the early 'eighties "New Romantic" scene (itself heavily influenced by David Bowie) and frequent clubgoers before they gained their pop-music fame. Considering the Boys' obvious interest in pop and club cultures, this is certainly a distinct possibility.
Annotations
- "So close to the truth but still far away" – These words from the first verse allude to the same sort of "So close and yet so far" conundrum as another track on the same album, "Closer to Heaven."
- "He's often there when the sun meets the sky…" – A rather poetic way of referring to sunrise. "When the sun meets the sky" is not original with the Pet Shop Boys, however, having served as the title of a 1996 song by U.S. singer-songwriter-guitarist Eric Johnson, the opening track on his album Venus Isle. Whether Neil knowingly borrowed the line from Johnson's song or came up with it independently is unknown at this time.
- "His looks are a crime" – This line mildly echoes, albeit in an inverted manner, some familiar words from the earlier "Left to My Own Devices": "It's not a crime when you look the way you do."
List cross-references
- Studio tracks on which Neil plays guitar
- PSB songs that have been used in films and "non-musical" TV shows
- What it's about: Neil's succinct statements on what a song is "about"
- Early titles of Pet Shop Boys songs
- PSB tracks that contain samples of other artists' music (in the "maybe" category toward the end)
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