A Top Secret Washing Machine

Writer - Tennant/Lowe
First released - 2026
Original album - (none)
Producer - Pet Shop Boys
Subsequent albums - (none)
Other releases - (none)

In a 2024 interview for the German magazine Musikexpress, Neil and Chris talked about an early version of this song, which they had written in December 2022, referring to it by its original title, "Putin's Underpants." Neil noted, "It's just a rough demo so far, we're still working on it. It's about Putin in his underpants, about his secrets, but also about the poisoned underpants that almost became [Alexei] Navalny's undoing in 2020." Chris then observed that he loved what Navalny said in court about how Putin would "go down in history" as "Vladimir the underpants poisoner."

Developed from Chris's demo simply called "Bass," this song is both satirical and deadly serious. It deals with Putin's dirty secrets—metaphorically alluded to as his underwear—especially as they concern his killing of opponents to his dictatorial regime. The lyric's "top secret washing machine" is his governmental apparatus to obscure and/or whitewash his crimes, hidden deep in the "bowels" (a clever choice of word there) of his "residence" like an actual washing machine consigned to someone's basement. The second verse alludes specifically to the attempted 2020 murder of Alexei Navalny that Chris had described: "When he poisons an opponent's underpants / Does he laugh at his brilliant scheme?"

Later verses compare him (at least in his ability "to get away with anything") to Stalin and, perhaps surprisingly, Peter the Great (1672-1725), a tsar famed for his reforms in moderninizing Russia but who, as an absolute monarch, was answerable to no one and could be ruthless to those who resisted him. Neil dares to suggest, however, that Putin may pay a personal price for his authoritarianism: "Is it difficult to sleep at night? / Does he always sleep alone?" We might be tempted to answer with a resounding "No!" at least to the first of those questions. But then Neil goes on to suggest that perhaps even Putin might worry about someday being imprisoned and judged for his misdeeds.

The upbeat music harkens back to their patented semi-martial, semi-triumphalist style of such previous tracks as "Go West" and "Delusions of Grandeur," and Neil's vocal seems a bit "repressed" as in the latter of those two classics. But perhaps that's just the result of the relatively low-fidelity online medium. If this track, mixed in its current form by their longtime musical assistant Pete Gleadall, is ever granted physical release, it will be interesting to see whether its overall sound is significantly enhanced.

Annotations

This song hints strongly at the familiar English phrase "dirty laundry" to refer to someone's embarrassing or incriminating secrets, which dates back in print at least to the 1860s. It was in turn derived from the old French proverb "Il faut laver son linge sale en famille," which means "One should wash their dirty linen within the family " (or "at home" or "in private"). By refusing to mention the phrase "dirty laundry" itself (famously employed by Don Henley in his 1982 hit by that name), Neil adroitly manages to invoke a cliché without actually using it.
"Knowing he got to the root of the problem" – When I first heard this line, I immediately thought that Neil might be engaged in a bit of wordplay. And I wasn't the only one. As one of my site visitors quickly suggested, Neil may be toying with the fact that "root" (also called the "radix") is a legitimate medical term used to refer to the internal base of the penis. I wouldn't surprise me if Neil were well aware of this fact and composed this line to take playful advantage of it in a song that refers to a man's underwear.
"Like Stalin and Peter the Great" – Anyone familiar with twentieth-century world history needs no introduction to Joseph Stalin, the dictator of the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953 (and who had been previously mentioned in two other PSB songs, " Hell" and certain mixes of "West End Girls"). But Peter the Great may be somewhat less well-known to modern audiences. Tsar of Russia from 1682 until 1725, Peter I of the House of Romanov was, despite his near-absolute despotism and ruthlessness against his enemies, relatively benevolent as despots go. Most notably, he was a reformer who put the interests of his country and its people above all else, taking major steps to modernize Russia and lift it out from its previous culture of medieval serfdom. Simultaneously he strengthed Russia militarily, which involved warring with his neighbors. An extremely divisive figure among contemporaries and historians alike, he has been variously viewed as everything from a saviour to the Antichrist.
"His secrets will be secret until that one unfortunate day his shit hits the fan" – One of the rare instances of an outright obscenity making it into PSB lyrics, which serves to heighten the impact of these, the concluding words of the song. They explicitly point to that inevitable day when the Putin regime comes to an end, whether through death or overthrow. Secrets that others (such as the "loyal woman or man" mentioned in the preceding lines) are involved in executing and/or covering up aren't truly "secret." Those persons are likely to reveal them when that time comes, possibly as part of a deal struck to help ensure their own survival. And we shouldn't overlook the wider implications of the phrase: if in real life shit were to hit the moving blades of a fan, it would undoubtedly make a huge mess, with anyone standing nearby certain of being soiled. Of course, the "shit" obscenity links directly to the underpants metaphor, which is yet another means of cleverly milking a cliché for all it's worth. The phrase "When the shit hits the fan" is known to date at least back to U.S. and Canadian soldiers during the Second World War.

List cross-references

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