It's Not a Crime

Writers - Tennant/Lowe
First released - 2024
Original album - none
Producer - Pet Shop Boys
Subsequent albums - (none)
Other releases - bonus track with the single "A New Bohemia "

A very early song, written in 1982, that was on the demo tape that Neil gave to Bobby O when they first met the following year. Neil has confirmed that he very consciously borrowed the title phrase for the final verse of "Left to My Own Devices"—the portion beginning "It's not a crime when you look the way you do…." But otherwise the two songs have absolutely nothing in common.

If it seems surprising that Chris and Neil should resurrect two very early songs—this and "I've Got Plans (Involving You)"—more than forty years (!) after they were originally composed, perhaps their appearance as bonus tracks with the wistful, deeply nostalgic "A New Bohemia" single has something to do with it. That is, if that song looks back fondly on the past, then what better way to complement it than with a couple of songs dug up from that bygone era?

Fans who long for Pet Shop Boys tracks that harken back to the eighties will almost certainly be delighted. "It's Not a Crime" quite obviously betrays its primitive origins, so to speak. The song's rapid-pace musical structure is simple by later PSB standards, even if it had been recorded only within the past few years. The lyrics are similarly sparse: three short quatrains, the third being a mere repetition of the first, with intervening choruses of—

We've got the time, we've got the time
It's not a crime, it's not a crime

That title clause, "It's not a crime," may allude to the fact that it was only comparatively recently—only 15 years before this song was written—that private ("Lock the door and lose the key") sexual relations between consenting adult males had been decriminalized in Britain.

Incidentally, the recurring use of a siren in this track—alluding of course to crime—is a nicely ironic touch.

Annotations

In the booklet accompanying the 2001 reissue of Introspective, Neil and Chris talk briefly about the connection of "It's Not a Crime" with "Left to My Own Devices." Along the way, Neil quotes from the former song's lyrics, which, as he repeats them there, are slightly different from those of the version released in 2024. Back in 2001, he quoted the chorus as beginning "Oh, I've got the time, I've got the time" rather than the released version's "Oh, we've got the time, we've got the time." And in the second verse, instead of "This is all I want you see" for the third line, he quoted it in 2001 as "Through the morning, afternoon." Whether these discrepancies are the result of Neil simply misremembering his old lyrics in 2001 or of his consciously deciding to revise them decades later is a question only he can answer.

List cross-references

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