One-Way Street
Writers - Tennant/Lowe
First released - 2017
Original album - Fundamental 2017 reissue Further Listening 2005-2007 bonus disc
Producer - Pet Shop Boys
Subsequent albums - (none)
Other releases - (none)
Life is a one-way street, you know. That's the metaphor at the heart of this song, which was written by Neil and Chris in February 2005 and offered to Bananarama, but rejected. So the Boys held on to it until they finally released their demo in 2017 as a bonus track with the reissue of Fundamental.
Neil sings of "driving down a one-way street," expressing his apparent surprise that no one he meets along way truly seems to be "in command." After all, as he puts it, "there's no escape from fate," though he goes on to say, "I don't care—I still like to think I'm in control." Notice, however, the doubt implicit in those words: he likes to think he's in control. But, all doubts aside, he's glad to have met someone on his journey: the "you" to whom he's ostensibly singing ("I took a road that led me straight to you").
It's not really paradoxical if you think about it. "Fate" aside, we do have a good deal of control over the paths we take in life. We make choices that take us in a given direction, and a different choice would have taken us elsewhere. We do have free will. But that doesn't change the fact that our lives are all still one-way streets. We can never truly go back in the opposite direction; any attempt to do so is just another turn along the road as we drive on toward each and everyone's ultimate goal: the end of our lives. The narrator's focus, however, on another person, "you," demonstrates his recognition that one of the things, if not the thing, that makes it a road worth traveling are the people—and perhaps one very special person—we meet along the way.
Musically, one of the most interesting things about this contemplative midtempo track is its midde-eight instrumental break, one of Chris's patented extended one-chord sequences. Highlighted by a repetitive but distinctive low "burping" synth solo, this segment is repeated almost verbatim for the song's fadeout. Also worth noting is the great similarity of this track with "Twentieth Century," particularly with regard to their prominent bass-synth lines which, at least superficially, sound nearly identical. Could this account for the fact that only one of them—namely "Twentieth Century"—actually made it onto Fundamental?
Annotations
- Neil has said that the title of the song was borrowed from that of a book sitting in a bookcase in their recording studio: One-Way Street (Einbahnstraße in the original German, published in 1928) by the German-Jewish philosopher and literary critic Walter Benjamin (1882-1940). (Neil concedes, however, that he's never actually read it.) Although Benjamin had successfuly escaped first from Nazi Germany and then (following a brief period of imprisonment) Nazi-occupied France, his subsequent residence in Franco's Spain was tenuous. Fearing deportation back to Nazi-controlled territory, he committed suicide.
- One of my site visitors has suggested an alternate interpretation of the song in which the one-way street about which Neil is singing refers to "living in a society that only accepts one type of relationship: straight relationships." On such a "one-way street," nearly everyone and everything around you tries to force you down that path. The line "Some even say, its a function of the state" may refer to the way in which many governments enforce one type of relationship, making being gay illegal. So when the narrator says, "I took a road that led me straight to you," it's ironic in that life in a "straight" society allowed a gay relationship to occur. While I myself don't ascribe to this interpretation of the song, I find it quite intriguing and believe it's well worth noting.
List cross-references
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