Tall Thin Men

Writers - Tennant/Lowe
First released - 2017
Original album - Nightlife 2017 reissue Further Listening 1996-2000 bonus disc
Producer - Pet Shop Boys
Subsequent albums - (none)
Other releases - (none)

Let's count the layers of irony in this hilarious and wildly atypical song, which at one time was planned as the opening number, a "prelude" of sorts, of their 2001 stage musical Closer to Heaven, but was ultimately deleted. First of all, the narrator—or, more accurately, each narrator (club-owner Vic and his boyfriend, a character who was also deleted)—asserts that he's not one of those "tall thin men who like show tunes." The stereotype, of course, is that it's gay men who are huge fans of musical theater, and perhaps who are more inclined to being tall and thin as well (read "gaunt" and "delicate"), although those are less pervasive stereotypical traits. Since Vic of course is gay, there's one level of irony right there. Yet that's just stereotype-busting. There's so much more.

Next consider the way in which this song is performed by the Pet Shop Boys. In short, the narrator (in this case, Neil singing alone) spends the entire song proclaiming his intense dislike of musicals. Along the way he cites the shows Carousel, Les Miserables (as "Les Miz"), Oklahoma, The Phantom of the Opera, Cats, and Miss Saigon, name-checks major musical stars Ute Lemper ("puts me in a temper") and "Elaine flaming Paige," and insists that he would much prefer to hear Madonna sing "Into the Groove" than "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina." But the music itself, performed by a small orchestra, has been arranged by occasional PSB collaborator Richard Niles much like a pre-rock-era show tune, or at least like a broad parody of one. The Boys had specifically asked that he make it stylistically reminiscent of a Kander & Ebb number, like those from their musicals Chicago and Cabaret.

It sounds like nothing else the Pet Shop Boys have done; the closest is the "Swing Version" of "Can You Forgive Her?" although "Tall Thin Men" is far more over-the-top. And in light of the fact that the Boys wrote this to be a showtune about not liking showtunes—well, you can't get much more ironic than that. In the demo Neil has a little trouble managing the melody, which is all over the place (after all, they wrote it not for his voice but two other voices), yet they nevertheless pull it off with tremendous aplomb.

Aside from having been briefly available as a digital download from the official PSB website, this remarkable recording was long left officially unreleased—but just as long bootlegged—until the 2017 reissue of Nightlife with bonus tracks. I'm not surprised that it should eventually see the official "physical" light of day; it's much too funny and much too good to have languished in perpetuity in the twilight world of unauthorized mp3 and Flash files. At one time I thought that perhaps Neil and Chris might be saving it for a subsequent musical, which they were hinting at shortly after Closer to Heaven closed. But someone else beat them to it. The producers of the 2006 Australian stage show titled Seriously—the Pet Shop Boys Reinterpreted included "Tall Thin Men" among the Tennant-Lowe songs given dramatic new readings. Of course, this hardly prevents the Boys from using this song however they may see fit at some point in the future.

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Neil has said that they got the title from a joke made by Robin Williams in the 1987 film Good Morning, Vietnam, where he refers to gay men as "tall thin men who like show tunes."
As described above, this song makes numerous references to musical theater. The shows specifically mentioned, in order, are:
- Carousel, the classic 1945 musical by Richard Rodgers (composer) and Oscar Hammerstein II (lyricist)
- Les Miserables (referred to by its popular nickname, "Les Miz"), the 1985 musical by Claude-Michel Schönberg (composer) with libretto by Alain Boublil and Jean-Marc Natel (English translation by Herbert Kretzmer), based on the 1862 novel by Victor Hugo
- The Phantom of the Opera (referred to simply as "Phantom"), the 1986 musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber (composer) with libretto by Charles Hart and Richard Stilgoe
- Cats, the 1981 musical also by Andrew Lloyd Webber (composer) with lyrics derived from verses by the late poet T.S. Eliot, with additional lyrics by Trevor Nunn based on additional Eliot poetry.
- Oklahoma, the very first Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, which premiered in 1943
- Miss Saigon, Schönberg's 1989 follow-up to Les Miserables, with lyrics by Alain Boublil and Richard Maltby, Jr., based on the Puccini opera Madame Butterfly
"I'm not that twee" – "Twee" is slang for something that is, in the words of the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, "affectedly or excessively dainty, delicate, cute, or quaint." Once almost exclusively British in usage, in recent decades it has made significant inroads into the North American lexicon as well, while also gaining more widespread acceptance beyond the confines of slang.
"… on the West End stage" – London's West End includes its theatre district—its parallel to New York's Broadway.
"Ute Lemper puts me in a temper" – Ute Lemper (born 1963) is a German-born, now U.S.-based singer who specializes in show tunes and has performed frequently in the musical theater. In more recent years (after "Tall Thin Men" was written and recorded), she has, however, moved away somewhat from the role of interpretive singer to being more of a singer-songwriter in her own right.
"… so does Elaine flaming Paige" – Singer/actress Elaine Paige (born 1948) is one of the giants of British musical theatre. She originated lead roles in Evita, Cats, and Chess. Here Neil uses a linguistic device known as tmesis or, more specifically, "expletive infixation," in which an expletive (in this case "flaming," but more commonly a rather more vulgar present participle also beginning with f) is inserted in the middle of a polysyllabic word or a person's name as a means of intensifying it, placing bitterly comic, often deprecating emphasis on both the interjection itself and the word or name that has been "split" in this manner.
"… never, ever wanna listen to Madonna singing 'Don't Cry for Me Argentina'" – American pop superstar Madonna assumed the lead role of Evita Perón in the 1996 film version of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Evita (lyrics by Tim Rice). Her rendition of that musical's best-known song, the oft-covered "Don't Cry for Me Argentina," became a hit for her in 1997.
"… give me 'Get into the Groove'" – A slightly inaccurate "retitling" of Madonna's 1985 hit "Into the Groove."
"Some house or garage…" – Neil's narrator expresses his preference for house and garage, two styles of electronic dance music that were especially popular in the late 1980s.
"When I get on one" – A curious and rather cryptic line that carries more than one possible meaning. Being "on one" is slang in Britain, the United States, and various other English-speaking nations for being on ecstasy or some other drug, stimulants in particular. On the other hand, it's also slang in at least some parts of Britain for being annoyed at someone or something, perhaps going on a rant about it. The fact that, in the context of the lyric, "one" doesn't seem to modify anything (one what?) lends credence to either of these interpretations.

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