Everybody Will Dance
Writers - Tennant/Lowe
First released - 2024
Original album - none
Producer - Pet Shop Boys
Subsequent albums - (none)
Other releases - bonus track with the single "Feel"
The Boys wrote this song in 2015 during their sessions for Super. Chris had said that he and Neil felt it was "a little young" for them, so they were of a mind to offer it to someone more age-appropriate. But they must have changed their minds since they released their own recording—an upbeat techno number with touches of house—nine years later.
In "Everybody Will Dance," Neil assumes not one but two narrative personae. The first opens the song with an "I'm ready for my close-up" quotation of the deranged Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard. Neil adopts the role of a dedicated scenester who not only lives for the hard-partying nightlife but is an active promulgator of it. As he watches "the beauty aristocracy… flooding through the door," he plans to "feed them all with champagne." When he repeatedly sings the title refrain, "Everybody will dance," it sounds less like a statement of fact than a command. The lyrics are packed with epigrams that exemplify his sybaritic lifestyle, such as:
They say that money has no meaning
But time’s not all you spend
But then, after two verses and choruses, Neil becomes a different character, indicated in the song by his switching from singing to speaking in a low, slightly distorted voice, and in the official PSB website's printed lyrics by italic text. No longer the host, he's now an observer at one such party populated by "dead beats and the royalty gone wrong" savoring "temporary pleasure." He then spies "an angel lost in the debris," of whom he demands, "Tell me who you are!"
In reply, Neil resumes singing as before, which suggests that the "angel" is the same character who opened the song. "I'm just a figment of my own imagination every night." He's his own creation who pretty much lives for the revelry he oversees. It's worth noting that, in showbiz parlance, an "angel" is someone who provides financial backing for a theatrical production, usually as an investment. So this angel's parties are also investments: "If someone gives me adoration, I won’t put up a fight." He then insists of the second character, "Get on up now, join the party and I’ll put you to the test."
But who wants to be "tested" on hedonism? It's not exactly the most appealing of calls to party. And it probably isn't meant to be. Remember that opening line? In Sunset Boulevard, it's spoken by someone who has just committed murder.
Annotations
- As noted above, the opening line of the song, "I'm ready for my close-up," is almost certainly a very conscious quotation from the classic 1950 film Sunset Boulevard, where Gloria Swanson, in the role of Norma Desmond, utters at its climax the immortal line, "All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up."
Mixes/versions
Officially released- Mixers: Pete Gleadall
- Single b-side (4:34)
- Mixers: Tom Stephan
- Superchumbo Mix (6:02)
- Superchumbo Dub (5:58)
List cross-references
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