The Forgotten Child

Writers - Tennant/Lowe
First released - 2019
Original album - Agenda (EP)
Producer - Pet Shop Boys, Tim Powell
Subsequent albums -(none)
Other releases - (none)

A song originally from the Super sessions, Chris had mentioned "The Forgotten Child" as a candidate for a future "dark techno album" that he and Neil were seriously considering. But it instead found its way onto their early 2019 Agenda EP, for which Neil described it as its "one rather sad song."

Indeed. By far the loveliest and most somber of the tracks on Agenda—even one of the most somber tracks in the entire PSB canon—it grieves for a symbolic lost and, as the title states, largely forgotten child. But it does so in an ambiguous manner that leaves the song open to various interpretations. For one thing, it refers to how "borders are crossed" and to "emergency laws" that could easily apply to the situation in the United States from late 2018 up through when the song was released in February 2019—the battle between Congress and President Trump over his planned "border wall" with Mexico, his claims about an immigration crisis, children separated from their families at detention centers, and threats to invoke a "national emergency"—although it seems all but certain that the Boys wrote this song before all of that political brouhaha launched into high gear in Washington, D.C.

Of course, those references to borders and emergencies can be applied equally well to any refugee crisis, and there always seems to be one or more of them somewhere in the world at any given time. So rather than focus on any one particular set of circumstances, let's focus on the more universal generalities. The lyrics call out several sad, bitter ironies:

Wars (from which refugee crises very often arise) are often allegedly fought in the name of children, allegedly for the sake of their futures ("She was our reason, our religion, our cause"), yet more often than not they are among the primary victims ("We were under attack… That was our focus/The child was forgotten").
In our struggles to survive, especially during times of great hardship, we sometimes make it more difficult for the youngest, most vulnerable among us to survive as well ("The times are brutal/Borders are crossed… The child is lost").
As we march into adulthood and become embroiled in the struggles of life, we lose sight of the children we once were ("The forgotten child/From whom we all grew"), and in losing our inner child, we seriously risk becoming lost ourselves ("I think she took flight/And now we're all lost").

The Boys don't offer any solutions, except perhaps by implication. If there is a solution, maybe it's for us not to forget the child, not to let her become lost. Perhaps if we were actually to remember the child—both the children around us and the child within us—the times would become less brutal, wars and refugee crises would become less likely.

It seems hopeless, but it's a truism that things become truly hopeless only when we truly give up hope.

That's my interpretation. Several of my site visitors, however, have suggested radically different interpretations, to which the lyrics clearly lend themselves. Please see my fourth bullet-point annotation below for some of these alternate viewpoints. I can't say that I agree with these other interpretations, but I can't say they're wholly without merit, either.

In Annually 2019, Neil attests to his own intentions in this song, which pretty much line up with those noted above. He says that "It's sort of got two things going on." First he confirms that the lyrics refer to "a refugee who's gone missing while fleeing for safety with her family." Then he adds that he's also making a point "that maybe we've all forgotten something about human values."

Annotations

Within 24 hours of the release of this song, several site visitors wrote to me to suggest that it may have been at least partly if not largely inspired by the fate of three-year-old Alan Kurdi, a Kurdish Syrian boy who drowned in the Mediterranean Sea in September 2015 while his family was trying to escape to Europe from the warfare in Syria. A photograph of Alan's body washed up on a Turkish beach was broadcast around the world, calling heightened attention to the plight of refugees. Although the child described in "The Forgotten Child" is consistently identified as female, that doesn't change the fact that the well-publicized Kurdi case may have served as inspiration, especially when you consider (1) the sound of waves on a beach at the end of the song and (2) the crashing-waves footage used throughout the song's official lyric video.
It has also been suggested (by Alley Richardson writing for the pop-culture website Purple Revolver) that the case of Madeleine McCann, a four-year-old British girl who disappeared from her bed in 2007 while she along with her family were vacationing in Portugal and hasn't been seen since, might have inspired this song. I don't ascribe to this theory except to the extent that any and all lost children might, in a general sense, have served as a collective inspiration.
Even though it almost certainly has nothing directly to do with the song, after listening I couldn't help but think of the biblical story (from The Gospel of Luke 2:41-52) in which Jesus as a 12-year-old boy becomes separated from his family and their traveling companions during a Passover pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Upon discovering during the first day of their return journey home that he's missing and not among friends or relatives, his parents Joseph and Mary frantically retrace their steps trying to find him. Fortunately they soon do, locating him back in the temple in Jerusalem, where young Jesus is discussing scripture and theology with the religious teachers there (who, the gospel notes, "were astonished at His understanding and answers"). While there's a big difference between a religious piligrimage and refugees escaping war, famine, or other tribulations, it nevertheless provides a "classic" illustration—one that the well religiously educated Neil could appreciate—of how children can become separated from their parents during the confusion of a mass exodus of any sort.
Among the other interpretations of this song suggested by site visitors include the following:
- This song may be an allegory that expresses sorrow over Britain abandoning the EU.
- It might be referring to Eve, the religio-mythic first woman of the Abrahamic religions. A number of lines can be taken to support this view, such as "The child is lost" possibly referring to the loss of innocence and, indeed, of Paradise itself after eating the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and "She was our reason, our religion" possibly referring to Eve's role in Original Sin ("the Fall of Man"), becoming foundational reason for the Christian religion. Even her being the child "from whom we all grew" suggests her as the mother of humanity.
- Perhaps either freedom or democracy is the "forgotten child" whom we are threatened with losing altogether. In a more general sense, something that embraces both freedom and democracy, it's our free/pluralistic Western way of living that is under attack by fake news, social media, and, above all, the increased dominance of multi-national companies that have lately grown more powerful than entire nations. Among the lines that can be read to support his view are (among others), "She was our reason, our religion, our cause,“ with the U.K. long viewing itself as the cradle of modern democracy, which in past centuries it spread across the world with religious enthusiasm. The aftermath of 9/11 and the war on terror became "Our best excuse for emergency laws/Invoked so often to explain and subdue." Finally, "I think she took flight and now we're all lost" in that, if freedom and democracy were gone, we (at least in the West) would inded be "lost."
Of course, Neil appears to have refuted the various alternate interpretations noted here—but, then again, we mustn't forget the intentional fallacy.

List cross-references

The key signatures of selected PSB songs
What it's about: Neil's succinct statements on what a song is "about"
The Pet Shop Boys' 10 greatest protest songs (in an explanatory note following the main list)
Early titles for Pet Shop Boys songs

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