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Liberation

Writers - Tennant/Lowe
First released - 1993
Original album - Very
Producer - Pet Shop Boys, Stephen Hague
Subsequent albums - Disco 2, PopArt, Smash
Other releases - single (UK #14)

Continuing on the apparent theme of newly discovered love established by the preceding song, "Liberation" finds Neil adopting the role of an ex-cynic who suddenly discovers the joy of love after a lifetime of dismissing it. Though he had always feared that falling in love would be constricting, he has found, on the contrary, that love has given him a sense of freedom he's never felt before. In short, the lover who has fallen asleep on his shoulder, far from weighing him down, has instead liberated him.

This track—the fourth single from Very—is essentially an extended pun in which the word "liberation" refers both to this individual sense of freedom and to "gay liberation," in which feelings and acts of love are themselves revolutionary statements of personal and social liberty. All that, plus one of the most beautiful melodies and arrangements in the PSB canon, results in one of the great moments in the Boys' career. In a September 1996 interview with Andrew Sullivan, Neil stated that the part about someone falling asleep on his shoulder during a long, late car ride is true. More recently he has denied this, though he has always conceded that this song is based on a relationship he was in when he wrote it.

Annotations

• Neil has noted that the first two notes of this song—"just the first two notes"—were taken from the theme for Friar Lawrence in the ballet Romeo and Juliet by the twentieth-century Ukrainian/Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev. Neil was listening to it while taking a bath at home, when those two notes "triggered" the melody in his mind. This caused him to leap from his tub and rush downstairs to the piano before he could forget it.
  
  
• "You were sleeping on my shoulder" – Writer Chris Randle has observed that this line "recalls" the opening lines of W.H. Auden's 1940 poem "Lullaby": Lay your sleeping head, my love, / Human on my faithless arm." I suspect this was not an intentional echo on Neil's part, but one never knows unless writers comment on such things.

Mixes/Versions

Officially released

• Mixer: Stephen Hague and Mike "Spike" Drake
  • Album and single version (4:06)
    • Available on Very
• Mixer: E-Smoove
  • E-Smoove 12" Mix (12:33)
    • An abbreviated version (6:09) of this mix appears on Disco 2
  • E-Smoove 7" Edit (3:49)
• Mixer: Murk Boys
  • Deep Vocal Mix (4:33)
  • Murk Deepstrumental Mix (4:32)
  • Murk Dirty Club Mix (2:44)
  • Oscar G's Dopeassdub Mix (4:33)

Official but unreleased

• Mixer: unknown
  • Demo (4:05)

List cross-references

• Major awards won by the Pet Shop Boys
• PSB songs based on classical compositions (and some others with "classical connections")
• Anne Dudley's guest work on PSB recordings
• My 30 favorite PSB songs, period
• The key signatures of selected PSB songs
• Tracks that mention "Pet Shop Boys"
• PSB songs with "Russian connections"
• The 15 strangest (good and bad) things the Boys have done (at least in public)
• The 10 longest commercially released "official" PSB remixes
• The Pet Shop Boys' appearances on Top of the Pops
• PSB songs that have been used in films and "non-musical" TV shows
• Films that have featured PSB songs
• My 5 favorite PSB videos
• How PSB singles differ (if at all) from the album versions
• What it's about: Neil's succinct statements on what a song is "about"

 

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