I Want You Now
by Liza Minnelli
Writers - Tennant/Lowe
First released - 1989
Original album - Results (Liza Minnelli)
Producer - Julian Mendelsohn, Pet Shop Boys
Subsequent albums - (none)
Other releases - (none)
The opening track on Results, written by Neil and Chris especially for the album. The narrator of the song has been abandoned by her lover, for whom she longs desperately. She can't get him off her mind; she imagines she sees him in the faces of approaching strangers. Though they're now separated by thousands of miles and by open seas, she's "prepared to take chances" to get him back. Taking advantage of Minnelli's powerful theatricality (not without a touch of campiness), the Pet Shop Boys created some of their most dramatic music for their Results collaboration, and this, the album's opening track, is one of the most dramatic of the lot. Whenever Liza sings the phrase "I want you now," it's so intense it's almost scary. In fact, this song virtually demands a female voice. If Neil or any other male were to sing it, it would sound dangerously pathological.
"I Want You Now" was originally titled "Can't Take No for an Answer." One line of the song's lyric was written by Chris—his only lyrical contribution to the album—when he changes the original words "every sultry evening" to the alliterating, somewhat more fluid "every empty evening."
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