Party in the Blitz

Writers - Tennant/Lowe
First released - 2024
Original album - none
Producer - Pet Shop Boys
Subsequent albums - (none)
Other releases - bonus track with the singles "Loneliness" and "Dancing Star"

This remarkable bonus track with the "Loneliness" single invites at least two interpretations, though one is far more likely than the other, and the two may actually inform each other. It describes a wild party complete with champagne and cocktails set "in the Blitz." The title and lyrics were inspired by the 2003 memoir Party in the Blitz (translated into English in 2005 from the original German Party im Blitz; Die englischen Jahre) by the Nobel Prize-winning Bulgarian-born expatriate author Elias Canetti, who settled in England after 1938 but continued to write in German. Therefore the song concerns the famous historical "Blitz" during World War II as Germany relentlessly bombed London and other U.K. ports and industrial cities night after night, trying in vain to beat the British into submission; hence the song's references to bombs—especially in relation to "Mornington Cresent" where "a bomb fell last night." Mornington Cresent is a London street and subway station, the site of a particularly serious German air raid early in the Blitz. During the night of September 9, 1940, bombs killed eleven people there and wounded dozens of others.

A second "subsidiary" interpretation is that it could refer to the notorious but short-lived (1979-1980) club "Blitz" in London's Covent Garden, which has often been credited as "ground zero" for the birth of the British "New Romantic" movement of the early 'eighties. Actually, there's nothing to say that it couldn't be referring to both simultaneously, with one being a metaphorical overlay on the other.

Regardless of the interpretation, the lyrics express a fatalistic devil-may-care attitude toward life, which is especially understandable under the circumstances of World War II. They refer to the sheer "pointlessness of life" amidst death and destruction: "Losing everything… who cares now?" This fatalism gives rise to rather darkly comic situations, such as when Neil's narrator describes the following occurrence:

As the bombs were falling
I was trying to explain existentialism
With the last of the champagne

Even the music carries darkly comic overtones. While its rhythms, instrumentation, and arrangement don't reflect those common to London circa 1940, they aptly convey a party atmosphere set in a time period perhaps other than our own. Amidst this apparent meaningless, the narrator confesses, "I wish that you were with me now / I wish I was your wife," indicating that Neil's persona here is either female or gay (talking to a presumably heterosexual man), neither of which itself is hardly unusual for him. The prospect of love endures despite death and destruction, despite apparent meaninglessness.

It's a strikingly original track, one that proves once again how versatile and imaginative our musical heroes can be when they set out to try something a little different.

Annotations

Blitz – The word "blitz" is derived from the German word blitzkrieg, meaning "lightning war." It came to refer generally to any quick, ferocious attack, especially with regard to an air raid. The Blitz (capitalized) came to refer very specifically to the German bombing attacks on U.K. cities—London in particular, but also Liverpool, Bristol, Portsmouth, Birmingham, Manchester, and others—in 1940 and '41. It is estimated that more than 40,000 British civilians were killed in The Blitz.
It's virtually inevitable that a song like this set during the Blitz would rhyme that word with Ritz, the name of a famous upscale London hotel and, during the period from the 1920s through the '40s, a popular nightspot for the well-to-do. But "Party in the Blitz" isn't the first to do so. That distinction belongs to Noël Coward, whose patriotic 1941 song "London Pride" concludes with the stanza,

Every Blitz,
Your resistance toughening.
From the Ritz
To the Anchor and Crown,
Nothing ever could override
The pride
Of London Town

(Coward follows his name-dropping of the Ritz with "Anchor and Crown," a playful rhyme-facilitating inversion of the name "Crown and Anchor," which has been used by a number of popular pubs in London and other U.K. cities, enough so that it would've been recognized by British listeners as a "byword" for a typical pub, thereby offering a marked contrast to the far more high-society Ritz.) Neil, of course, is known to be a fan of Coward. He had served as executive producer of the 1999 Twentieth-Century Blues: The Songs of Noël Coward tribute album, to which the Pet Shop Boys had contributed their remake of "Sail Away," and which also featured a recording of "London Pride" by Damon Albarn and Michael Nyman. So, needless to say, Neil is quite familiar with the Coward song.
"too many wild oats need sowing" – A play on the common English-language idiom "Sowing wild oats," which refers in a rather blithely accepting manner to irresponsible, carefree behavior, especially involving sex and alcohol, and particularly when indulged in by young people.
"dick shrinking" – I'm no prude, but I have to note that this is an exceptionally vulgar line for a Pet Shop Boys song. "Dick," of course, is slang for "penis." The fact that it's "shrinking" reflects the comic, fatalistic carelessness of the narrator, who acknowledges that it's of little concern amidst the falling of bombs. Incidentally, it doesn't necessarily identify the narrator as either male or female; if male it might be referring either to his own penis or that of a prospective partner, whereas if female then it obviously belongs to that partner. Either way, it seems of little consequence.
"getting off your tits" – More vulgarity, this time with British slang that means becoming thoroughly intoxicated. As one of my site visitors astutely observed, the unusual crudeness of language in this song—unusual at least by PSB standards—is undoubtedly a reflection of the loosening of inhibitions and breakdown of the moral compass so common in wartime circumstances when people feel they might die at any moment. It may also reflect a possible working class or urban poor background for the song's narrator.
existentialism – A philosophical movement that ponders the very meaning and value of human existence, generally emphasizing matters of free will and personal responsibility. It was of particular interest among "sophisticates" (referred to in the song's "extra verse" on the official PSB website) during the period immediately before, during, and immediately after World War II. It was, in fact, the war itself that triggered an intellectual vogue for existentialistic philosophy. The reference to existentialism in this song therefore has both intensely serious and darkly comic implications, the latter particularly with regard to the very notion of such intellectual discussions amidst the falling of bombs and a drunken party atmosphere.
The Superchumbo Mix of the song features DJ and "New Romantic" icon Princess Julia twice asking "Would you let you in?" This may be a takeoff on a notorious longstanding legend (denied by its principals) that Visage frontman Steve Strange, back when he hosted the Blitz club circa 1980, refused entry to Mick Jagger by holding a mirror up to his not particularly handsome face and challenging, "Would you let yourself in?"

Mixes/Versions

Officially released

Mixer: Pete Gleadall
- "Loneliness" single b-side (3:09)
Mixer: Tom Stephan
- Superchumbo Mix featuring Princess Julia hrh (4:36)
  - A bonus track on the CD single of "Dancing Star"
- Superchumbo dub featuring Princess Julia hrh (5:12)
  - Available as an official Parlophone release on the Beatport website.

List cross-references

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