Pet Shop Boys "Miserablism" C/D

I love how it's one of many PSB songs about Morrissey and how Neil isn't taken with him. "Getting Away With It" is another (yes, it's Electronic, but bear with me...)

Either Alternative or the Behaviour rerelease notes has Tennant talking about that, yup.

I think Neil explains in the liner notes for Alternative that this track was removed at the last minute from Behaviour and replaced with "The End of the World".

"I think we wrote this in the beginning of 1990, during the shoe-gazing period, when Morrissey was huge as a solo artist. It's another song sort of written from the point of view of being Morrissey - the first song like that being 'Getting away with it', The Electronic single, which I wrote most of the words of. 'Getting away with it' is looking at Morrissey's persona of being miserable and all the rest of it, and saying that he's been getting away with it for years. It's meant to be humorous. 'Miserablism' is a satire, a little like 'How can you expect to be taken seriously?' What bugged me about the shoe-gazers always looking really miserable is that people think someone like that is really serious. It's something that endlessly bugs me in pop music - that someone with the style of being serious is always accepted as being serious. And also that anyone being playful is then not taken seriously, whereas actually being playful is actually more difficult than being 'serious', and possibly can end up being a lot more serious at the same time. The words to this song were inspired by someone telling me that they asked their father on his deathbed what it was like, and he said: 'is is, isn't isn't'. And I thought that was a great quote, and a very kind of miserablist way of looking at the world. There's no romance - the only thing that exists is what really exists."

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Chris: And of course it was quoted by Clinton only a couple of years ago. 'That depends what the definition of 'is' is.' A direct reference to the lyrics of Neil Tennant.

Neil: Anyway, as quite often with us, in the middle bit you get the real sentiment. It sounds a bit pretentious, but it says, "If 'is' wasn't and 'isn't' were/You can't be sure/but you might find ecstasy." We recorded it in Germany for the album. It was meant to sound Giorgio Moroder-ish, Harold Faltermeye thought it should be a single when we doing it and it was on the album until very late in the day. Doing these reissues, we found all the Behaviour half-inch mixes together on huge reel, and you can see where "Miserablism" has been cut out. We decided that it was too jocular. It was mostly Chris who didn't want it. I think it's a really good song.

Chris: It's alright.

Of course I am listening to it now. Weird thing is that the shoegaze echoes in this song musically a bit, all the slow flanging up and down!

In the sleeve notes of the reissues, Neil says the lyric is written "from the point of view" of someone like Moz, which may not exactly equate to making fun of him. Elsewhere Neil has said that he likes Moz, and that the latter's lyrics "are incredibly funny except people don't notice." Or something like that.

Of course, I personally think everyone should make more fun of Moz.