Living in the Past

Writers - Tennant/Lowe
First released - 2023
Original album - Lost (EP - digital edition only)
Subsequent albums - (none)
Other releases - (none)

Not to be confused with the classic Jethro Tull song from more than a half-century before, famed as one of the extremely few hits in 5/4 time.

On February 10, 2023, without any fanfare, advance announcement, or even faint hints, the Pet Shop Boys surprised everyone with the sudden release of a brand new song via YouTube. "Living in the Past," described as a "home demo," was clearly written (or at least its lyrics were, if not its music) only very shortly before, inspired by events of only a week earlier that the Boys had noted on their website. There on February 3, under the header "Stalin is back," they wrote about how "A new bust of the Soviet dictator was unveiled in Volgograd, Russia, as [Vladimir] Putin arrived, invoking Stalin in a twisted defence of his war on Ukraine." (This event took place the day before, on February 2, 2023.) Accordingly, to a slow, simple, somber piano backdrop—with subtle highlights by what sounds like a vibraphone, though undoubtedly synthesized or sampled—the new song's lyrics begin:

I arrive in the city
Where they've unveiled a bust
My predecessor
Still much discussed

In this way Neil writes and sings from Putin's own perspective.

He goes on to note how "We tried to forget" Stalin even as history had recorded his countless crimes against humanity, but "new circumstances" (that is, the war on Ukraine) have inspired a reassessment of his legacy: "Once again he's a god." We'll soon see precisely why this is the case.

The lyrics further describe how Putin wants people to fear him, just as everyone had feared Stalin: “I want men to die with my name on their lips.” Perhaps the song's cleverest, most memorable lyrical turn takes place during its bridge (middle eight), as synth strings join in. Neil has Putin declare himself "a living embodiment of a heart of stone" as well as "a human monument to testosterone." He thereby parallels the bust of Stalin he has just unveiled: what Stalin now is as a hard, cold, dead sculpture, Putin has become in living, human form. It also suggests the notion of "testosterone poisoning": overly aggressive, even pathological behavior triggered by a warped excess of supposedly "masculine" values and ambition.

By the song's end, Neil—his voice betraying bitter, scarcely concealed emotion—unveils Putin's greater objectives. Regarding the West as "effete," Putin wants "the old status quo," before the collapse of the Soviet Union, when Russia was an undisputed superpower. Yes, it's back to the days of Stalin, when both the leader and his nation were feared: “I remember how it was, and I won't let it go.”

It's a truly powerful song, wrenched, as it were, from the evening news. Popular music simply doesn't get much more timely than this.

Annotations

The song's recurring refrain, "The past isn't even past / That's how long it lasts," echoes famous lines written by the great U.S. author William Faulkner (1897-1962) in his 1951 novel Requiem for a Nun: "The past is never dead. It's not even past." In other words, the past is utterly linked with the present, its legacies continuing to endure through their influence on current events. To look at it another way, the past haunts the present in such a way as to affect it profoundly.
Still much discussed – Possibly a bit of punning wordplay on Neil's part in this reference to Stalin. Consider that the word "discussed" sounds very much like "disgust." Just as Stalin is still a subject of discussion, many if not most people also regard him as a thoroughly disgusting human being.
I want men to die with my name on their lips – A positively chilling line that conveys, perhaps more than any other in the song, the combined narcissism, sociopathology, and bloodthirstiness of its inferred speaker—that is, in the context of the song, Vladimir Putin. For someone's name to be on one's lips is a tried-and-true metaphorical and presumably literal expression of how very much that person is on another's mind. In other words, when someone's name is on your lips, you're obviously thinking about that person. (One of a number of examples of this idea in popular music is a 1966 album track by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, "I Woke Up (with Your Name on My Lips)," written by their frequent producer and collaborator Bob Crewe.) So if Putin wants people to die with his name on their lips, then he wants to dominate their thoughts right up to the final moments of their lives, almost certainly because he himself is either their raison de mourir (their reason for dying, as opposed to raison d'être, their reason for existing) or the direct cause of their deaths. In short, he wants men to die for him and/or because of him. One of my site visitors wrote to me about the way in which the last words of dying soldiers on the battlefield is often "Mother" or "Mama" (or, of course, its equivalent in whatever language they speak), an apparent fact referred to in a line from the 2015 David Gilmour song "In Any Tongue": " I hear 'Mama' sounds the same in any tongue." So if Putin wants his own name rather than "Mama" to be on men's lips (including those of soldiers) when they die may suggest that he wants their bond to him to be greater than that between mother and son—and, by extension, even greater than that between Mother Russia and her sons.

heart of stone – This phrase, which has become a cliché in English, is commonly used to describe someone who has no feeling or empathy for others. Its clichéd status makes it easy to forget that it has very ancient literary and biblical origins. Its precedents date back at least to the 800s BC, in which something quite like it is found in Homer's Odyssey: "Thy heart is even harder than stone." It later (between 700 and 300 BC) appeared in the biblical book of Job: "His heart is as firm as a stone" (41:24, KJV).
testosterone – The primary androgen (male sex/reproductive hormone). Both men and women have testosterone in their systems, but men typically have it in far greater amounts than do women. (By the same token, both men and women have female sex/reproductive hormones, or estrogens, but women typically have them in far greater amounts.) Testosterone affects both the physical and emotional/psychological characteristics of the individual, with greater amounts of testosterone typically causing (among other things) greater bone and muscle mass, bodily hairiness (though, conversely, also male-pattern baldness), confidence, assertiveness, heightened sex drive, and development of male sex organs. Too much testosterone in a person can be as bad as (or even worse than) not enough. Therefore when Neil describes Putin as "A human monument to testosterone," that would at best be a mixed blessing both for him and for everyone around him, including other nations. To borrow a popular phrase that dates back at least to the mid-1970s, Putin suffers from "testosterone poisoning," resulting in others suffering its effects.

Mixes/Versions

Officially released

Mixer: Pet Shop Boys
- "Home Demo" (4:31)
Mixer: Pete Gleadall

"New Mix" (4:36)
- Very similar to the "Home Demo" except crisper and "cleaner" with much more prominent synth-strings and bass in the background during the second half of the track and the final chord sustained a little longer
- Available with the digital/downloadable edition of the PSB EP Lost

List cross-references

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