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The Secret of Happiness

Writers - Tennant/Lowe
First released - 2024
Original album - Nonetheless
Producer - James Ford
Subsequent albums - none
Other releases - none

A ballad with, as one reviewer has put it, an "opulent" arrangement, this song finds Neil opening his vocal performance (and later repeating it) with a gasp of "Butterflies!" This serves as shorthand for the blended sense of beauty and wonder that his narrator has found in the person he loves. It could also be a description of the somewhat nervous feelings (as in butterflies in the stomach) he has in the throes of new romance. A recurring brief instrumental motif even seems to mimic the rhythm of the word "butterflies," which is a lovely touch. Both thematically and stylistically something of a companion piece to the Bilingual track "It Always Comes as a Surprise" from two-and-a-half decades before, "The Secret of Happiness" finds the Pet Shop Boys in full-on romantic mode.

During the COVID lockdown, Neil had watched the 1938 musical comedy film Carefree starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers with music by Irving Berlin. He was particularly enchanted by the song "Change Partners" and became, in his own words, "completely obsessed" by it. This caused him to delve into the career and work of Irving Berlin, even going so far as to buy a collection of his sheet music. Berlin's influence would find its way into this song, which underwent a sequence of title changes: "The Autumn in Me," "The Summer in Me," "Something Like Happiness," and then finally "The Secret of Happiness."

As with "It Always Comes as a Surprise," the Boys perform "The Secret of Happiness" in a bossa nova style, though it's a touch subtler than in the earlier song. Although it was undoubtedly Astaire's rendition of "Change Partners" that first piqued Neil's interest in that song, it's possible that a later version, Frank Sinatra's 1967 rendition with Antônio Carlos Jobim—the Brazilian "father of bossa nova" as he is popularly known—has a stronger stylistic influence on the PSB recording. As it so happens, one of Neil's "listening picks" in Annually 2021 was the 1977 album Amoroso by João Gilberto, four songs from which were composed by Jobim. And like Jobim, Gilberto is a major figure in the bossa nova genre. So bossa nova was clearly very much in Neil's thoughts around the time he wrote and recorded "The Secret of Happiness."

The song's narrator regards his lover as a respite from the difficulties of the world. Although he was "hungry, angry, hot and tired," he says all of that changed when "I walk[ed] into your life." His lover doesn't merely possess "the secret of happiness"; rather, he is the secret of happiness.

Again reminiscent of an earlier song (in this case "Miracles"), Neil employs the pathetic fallacy to express how nature itself seems to mirror the beauty and wonder that his narrator is experiencing. Although it's completely ordinary at northerly latitudes for summer daylight to continue late into the evening, he nevertheless attributes this fact to the presence of this love in his life. Everything else in nature around him seems in a benign conspiracy to reflect his happiness: "Moon is rising, trees are sighing, poetry again." And it's all because his lover possesses "all that I want… and maybe more as an encore."

You just don't get much more romantic than this.

Annotations

"The Secret of Happiness" is extremely unusual among PSB songs in that, although it's still credited to Tennant-Lowe, Neil apparently wrote it completely on his own. In Annually 2024, Chris says of it, "I had nothing to do with this track. Literally zilch."
"On a wall you've hung Babe Rainbow from The Sunday Times" – "Babe Rainbow" is the title of a1968 painting, popular enough to be often reproduced on posters, by the British pop artist Peter Blake, perhaps best known for his iconic sleeve design for the 1967 Beatles album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Blake describes "Babe Rainbow" as "a fictitious lady wrestler.… twenty-three years old and has broken her nose in the ring." Nevertheless, she's quite lovely. The original painting hangs in London's Victoria and Albert Museum (the "V&A"). The particular image described in the song, however, has been cut from a reproduction in the British newspaper The Sunday Times. Since it's a newspaper clipping, not a poster or other more sophisticated reproduction hanging on the wall, this line could indicate that, despite his artistic sensibilities, the person about whom the narrator is singing isn't well-off financially.
"Enigmatic as the Mona Lisa" – The subject of Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci's famed circa 1505 painting Gioconda, more commonly known as the Mona Lisa, is known for her slight, enigmatic smile, which has captured the public's imagination and inspired endless speculation for centuries.
"Your pearls before the swine" – The phrase "pearls before the swine" comes from Matthew 7: 6-7 in the Bible, where Jesus tells his disciples, "Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet…" (King James Version). In this way, Jesus seems to be telling his followers not to waste their time preaching to people disinclined to receiving their message. In "The Secret f Happiness," Neil appears to be using the phrase a little differently, suggesting that what the narrator's lover says and does in the world boils down to "pearls before the swine," thereby contrasting his beauty and excellence with the more mundane, more unpleasant aspects of the world around them. It sounds like an expression of marvel at his lover's very presence in the world since, in the narrator's eyes, he's too good for it.
One of my site visitors has suggested that the line "Trees are sighing poetry again" may be an allusion to the poem "The Hill Pines Were Sighing," written circa 1890 by the British poet Robert Seymour Bridges (1834-1930).
Another site visitor has suggested that this song may reflect the transformation from a caterpillar to a butterfly invoked in the earlier PSB song "Metamorphosis." The very first word in "The Secret of Happiness" (if you don't count the initial gasp of "Butterflies!") is "Hungry," which may be inspired by Eric Carle's very popular 1969 children's book The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Later in the song, "fluttering" is mentioned. Perhaps the narrator is describing his own metaphorical transformation from caterpillar to butterly, triggered by falling in love. I can't say that I ascribe to this particular interpretation of the song's butterfly references myself, but it doesn't strike me as unreasonable.
And one other site visitor, who hails from Denmark, suggests that "The Secret of Happiness" may be "a slightly ironic fantasy inspired by the annual Happiness Index by Country," an annual ranking of countries on the apparent/alleged happiness of their inhabitants. Nordic countries (Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland) routinely rank very high in this assessment, indicating that their citizens are, on the average, among the happiest in the world. The song indeed refers to "Northern skies and butterflies, it's still light at 10" and makes other statements that point unmistakably to a northerly setting. To be sure, however, this befits the Boys' native U.K. as well (or even, for that matter, the most northerly portions of the United States). Regardless, it's an interesting observation.

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