Purple Zone
by Soft Cell and Pet Shop Boys
Writers - Almond/Ball/Mulhall
First released - 2022
Original album - Happiness Not Included (Soft Cell)
Producer - Soft Cell, Pet Shop Boys, Philip Larsen
Subsequent albums - (none)
Other releases - single (Soft Cell/Pet Shop Boys)
The classic British synth duo Soft Cell, consisting of vocalist Marc Almond and instrumentalist David Ball, released in May 2022 Happiness Not Included, their first new album in two decades. It includes "Purple Zone," a song that proved the fulfillment of several weeks of rumors when the Pet Shop Boys' website announced early the preceding March that it would be released later that month as a collaborative single between Soft Cell and the Boys, featuring vocals by both Marc and Neil as well as additional production by PSB. It would be released first digitally, but physical formats would soon follow.
Originally it was planned that the version of "Purple Zone" on Happiness Not Included would be Soft Cell's original non-collaborative "solo" rendition and that the collaboration would only be a single. But Almond later confirmed in an online statement that those plans had changed. He noted that he and Ball had come to regard the Soft Cell/PSB collaboration as "the definitive version" and that it would now appear on the CD edition of the album itself. They were even willing to delay the album's release in order to ensure that this newer version of the song could be included. (The original "non-PSB" version, however, remains on the vinyl edition of the album.)
Almond went on to describe the circumstances that led to this collaboration. "Neil and Chris… came to see Soft Cell on our last tour and loved the song 'Purple Zone' so much they wanted to do a mix of it and… it turned into a full-on collaboration! I felt that 'Purple Zone' was missing an ingredient and… it was the Pet Shop Boys!"
The official Soft Cell website describes the song as "yearning, airy pop [that] contrasts its uplifting sonics with Almond's darkly doomed lyrics." Those lyrics express a desire to escape a mundane, numbing, frustrating life, one of "no glory, no glamour, too many confusions coloring all my delusions"—a state labeled by Almond "the purple zone." As summarized in the recurring refrain:
Let's get out of this life
I'm afraid and all alone
Paralyzed in the purple zone
Almond and Tennant trade off on the lead vocals and at times sing in unison. Compared to the original, pre-PSB version of the song, the Boys' production speeds it up a bit and considerably beefs up the arrangement, most notably with a throbbing synth-bass line and those patented synth-horn stabs that characterized such PSB hits as "Always on My Mind" and "Go West." In many ways it's something of a throwback, but in the best possible way: highly reminiscent of dance classics from the late 1980s and early '90s, appropriate enough considering the sources. As described on the official PSB website, "Raising its tempo, Pet Shop Boys… added a hi-NRG sheen that elevates the track's moody melancholy, Chris Lowe's trademark high-drama synths producing a theatrical intensity." It's no wonder that the Soft Cell guys were so clearly pleased with the results.
Annotations
- There are a number of different meanings and uses of the phrase "purple zone" in the wider world, so to speak, most if not all of which have little if anything to do with how it's used in this song. They involve such widely diverse subjects as the law, finances, psychology, theology, health, medicine, sports, and even air clearances for the royal family. So I'll simply acknowledge that the phrase isn't original with this song and won't concern myself with detailing these myriad "alternate" meanings and uses here. That's why God made the internet, especially Google.
- Several of my site visitors have noted that the music video for "Purple Zone" seems to contain a number of perhaps "in-joke" references to past PSB songs and videos. Whether these are intentional or coincidental will have to remain uncertain unless the Boys and/or Soft Cell comment on it themselves at some point. By the same token, I'm not familiar enough with the Soft Cell corpus to be able to comment on possible similar connections to Soft Cell's videos and/or songs. Whatever the case, among these possible PSB references are:
- Marc Almond working in an ice cream truck. A similar ice cream truck appears in the video for PSB's "A Red Letter Day."
- A young man shaves in a bubble bath both in the "Purple Zone" and "Being Boring" videos.
- Fuzzy dice hanging from a car's rearview mirror both in this video and in that for "Always on My Mind" (in scenes taken from the film It Couldn't Happen Here).
- As many have noticed, Chris and Neil are playing dominos in this video with Marc and David; Chris even does a little "chair dance," possibly alluding to "Domino Dancing."
Mixes/Versions
Officially released
- Mixer: Pet Shop Boys
- Single/album version (3:11)
- Pet Shop Boys Extended Mix (6:02)
- Club Mix, aka Pet Shop Boys Remix (6:14)
- Club Dub Mix, aka Pet Shop Boys Remix Dub (6:14)
- Mixer: Manhattan Clique
(Philip Larsen and Chris Smith)
- Manhattan Clique Remix (5:55)
- Manhattan Clique Dub (5:56)
- Manhattan Clique Remix Edit (3:51)
- Mixer: Hercules & Love Affair
- Hercules & Love Affair Mix (5:47)
- Hercules & Love Affair Dub (5:47)
- Mixer: Philip Larsen
- Original Soft Cell "solo" version (3:06)
- Officially available only on the vinyl edition of the Soft Cell album Happiness Not Included. By contrast, the version featuring the Pet Shop Boys appears on the CD edition of the album.
- Original Soft Cell "solo" version (3:06)
List cross-references
- Artists with whom PSB have collaborated
- How PSB singles differ (if at all) from the album versions
- Singles that weren't included on Smash and the likely reasons for their exclusion
- Other songs in which Chris's voice can be heard
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