Through You
Writers - Tennant/Lowe
First released - 2024
Original album - none
Producer - Pet Shop Boys
Subsequent albums - (none)
Other releases - bonus track with the single "Loneliness"
This song is one of two b-sides/bonus tracks to "Loneliness," the first single from the Boys' 2024 album Nonetheless. A densely synthesized track with an unusually "rough" sound—clearly meant to reflect the confrontational tone of its lyrics, conveyed with correspondingly distorted vocals—"Through You" finds the Boys taking some unnamed person to task for his or her downright wickedness, which they find utterly transparent: "I've seen right through you / I know the true you." The person whom they're addressing takes perverse pleasure in defeating others in life, judging his or her success in terms of the failure of other people:
It’s not enough to succeed
Others must fail
There is your mantra
Bitter and stale
It’s not enough that you win
Others must lose
While it's extremely tempting to believe that Neil and Chris have a specific well-known public figure in mind in these admonitions—and, in fact, I personally suspect they do—such an interpretation is hardly necessary. A great many persons, both well-known and otherwise, exemplify these attitudes. This is especially true in the realms of big business and politics ("The power grabs so bald"). But, then again, we probably all have encountered such persons in our everyday lives. A fundamental irony, of course, is that the very persons addressed in a song like this are somewhat unlikely to hear it or, having heard it, to derive any lessons from it.
Annotations
- "There is your mantra" - The word mantra comes from the ancient Sanskrit language and is used in both Hinduism and Buddhism to refer to a word or sound uttered repeatedly as a meditative aid. It entered the English language in the 1950s and '60s as a metaphorical description for any slogan, byword, or catchphrase used by someone over and over again, especially as words to live by. In this song, the lines "It’s not enough to succeed / Others must fail" are said to be the "bitter and stale" mantra of the person(s) being addressed.
- The lines quoted above echo a couple of lines ("It's not enough to succeed, others must fail / My unhappy mantra I wish I could escape") from the song "This Sullen Welsh Heart" from the 2013 Manic Street Preachers album Rewind This Film. But that line hardly originated with the Manic Street Preachers. In fact, its antecedents back at least to the 1600s, when a differently phrased but virtually identical sentiment was expressed by the French author François Duc de la Rochefoucauld. Much more recently, a much closer approximation was attributed by Bennet Cerf to British author Someret Maugham, who reportedly once quipped, "… it is not enough to have achieved personal success. One's best friend must also have failed." Later Cerf revised Maugham's alleged quote to the more succinct "It is not enough that I succeed; my best friend must also fail." In 1976, Nigel Rees attributed to U.S. author Gore Vidal the words "It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail." Others to whom that cynical statement or something very much like it has been attributed include Broadway producer David Merrick, software titan Larry Ellison, and Irish-British author Iris Murdoch. So there's no shortage of possible sources for the Pet Shop Boys to have drawn upon for that line.
- The only version of "Through You" that has so far been released is designated an "extended mix." Naturally, this indicates that there's another mix somewhere that's not "extended." It will be interesting to see whether it actually ever sees the light of day.
- Two of my site visitors have independently written to me to observe that "Through You" offers an interesting contrast to the earlier PSB song "Transparent," which had also served as a b-side, in its case for the 2003 single "Miracles." While both songs involve the concept of "seeing through" someone, in "Transparent" it's the narrator who wishes he were "see-through" as a means of becoming even closer to someone he loves. On the other hand, in "Through You" the narrator insists that the person he's talking to—someone he doesn't love at all—is already completely transparent.
- Another site visitor has shared an intriguing interpretation of this song that I happen to disagree with but which I nevertheless feel is worth noting. He believes that the first part of the song, when the lyrics are being sung by "a computerized voice," represents how technology (computers, social media, mobile phones, etc.) and IT companies are monitoring our lives through apps, seeing through us and reading our thoughts, thereby predicting what items we may want to buy ("chart your motivation") and determining where we want to go ("anticipate your course"). The second part, sung by a human voice (that is, by Neil) is the human response, demonstrating that we—or at least some of us—aren't under any naive delusions otherwise, that we're actually quite aware of these aspects of modern technology and that we, therefore, can see through them. It is, as I said, a fascinating interpretation of the song, but I don't ascribe to it myself.
List cross-references
- Tracks for a prospective third PSB b-sides album
- Songs on which Chris sings (or "speaks") lead (a questional entry at the end of the list)
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