5.
suffers from overplay
this is what Hellfire would sound like
such a statement and still means a lot to me
ooops...
5. It's A Sin
9.1277777778
AUS #10 AUT #1 (Gold) CAN #8 FIN #1 FRA #12 GER #1 IRL #1 ITA #3 NZ #8 NOR #1 POL Radio Three #1 SPA #1 (Gold) SWE #1 (Platinum) UK #1 (Silver) US #9 US Dance #3
Highest score: 11x4 (
@GhettoPrincess,
@SmashHitter,
@CorgiCorgiCorgi,
@Heaven on Earth),
10x16 (
@Peer_Gynt10,
@tylerc904,
@Sally_Harper,
@ohnoitisnathan,
@Scoundrel_Days,
@KingBruno,
@etcetera,
@Auntie Beryl,
@slurmjunkie,
@JonBcn,
@DominoDancing,
@One Stop Candy Shop,
@JakeMagnus,
@RaggedTiger,
@Farnaby,
@Mikey1701)
Lowest score: 4 (
@Bleu Noir)
'I'm sort of a vaguely religious person,' says Neil.
'Lapsed Catholic and all that,' says Chris.
'It's never left me totally. I'm not an atheist, though funnily enough I would quite like to be an atheist. But I just can't be. I'm sort of in thrall to the idea of God...I like the feeling of religion...the idea of being good has always attracted me. When I was a little boy I used to want to be a saint. I admired saints because they were so good – like St Francis of Asisi, who was a rich man and gave away all his money. I've always wanted to be a good person. Thought-out wickedness and selfishness always shocks me.'
A silence.
'I find it a turn-on,' says Chris. 'I think it's closely related to sex.'
'But you think sex is bad,' says Neil. 'It's a Christian guilt thing, associating sex with guilt. I think I do that too.'
In a medieval dungeon, hooded monks process with candles. A bonfire is lit, and Neil appears as a prisoner in peasant clothes. Chris is the jailer, holding chains in heavy gauntlets. Shadows and flames cut with faces that represent the seven deadly sins. It seems that Neil is being tried by the inquisition for his (undefined) sins. It was the first time they worked with the British film director and artist Derek Jarman. 'I just thought of it initially as another pop video,' said Jarman, who had made videos for Marianne Faithfull, Bryan Ferry and The Smiths, among others. 'Of all the music people I've worked with they put the most trust in me. [They have] a knowledge of theatre and know that having asked people to do something you have to leave them free to do what they want if you're going to get good results. I dressed Chris in some old rags. He still says it felt the most comfortable of all the costumes he's worn.' Neil adds that the video was filmed in London's as-yet undeveloped Docklands, 'in a wharf where Kubrick had just shot
Full Metal Jacket...I didn't want it to look like we were taking the mickey out of religion. We were very anxious to have this mood – beautiful, serious and dry.' Personalities playing the seven deadly sins included actor Ron Moody, fashion designer Stephen Linnard and painter Duggie Fields.
The words in Latin that Neil recites at the end –
"Confiteor Deo omnipotenti vobis fratres, quia peccavi nimis cogitatione, verbo, opere et omissione, mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa" – translate, "I confess to almighty God, and to you my brothers, that I have sinned exceedingly in thought, word, act, and omission, through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault." The samples of the mass in 'It's a sin' were actually recorded in Westminster Cathedral, while the "ambience" of the middle section ("Father forgive me…") was recorded in Brompton Oratory by producer Julian Mendelsohn, who recorded the "sound" of the church, empty at the time aside from someone cleaning the candle-holders.
Neil: One day in 1982, when we were in Ray Roberts' studio in Camden, where we used to write songs in the early Eighties, Chris started playing those chords, and it sounded very religious to me, like a hymn, and I started singing 'it's a, it's a, it's a sin' and I wrote the words in about five minutes. Having thought of the phrase 'it's a sin', I thought '
what's a sin?' and having been brought up as a Catholic you thought everything was a sin. You're told that thinking about it is as bad as doing it. The song was meant to be kind of big and funny and camp.
Chris: Neil played cowbell. We were obsessed with cowbells in those days.
Neil: We demoed it in New York with Bobby 'O'.
We thought of recording it with Stock Aitken Waterman for
Please because we like 'So You Think You're A Man', the Divine record they did, but Pete Waterman didn't like the song. We also submitted it to Divine's manager and were going to send it to Ian Levine for Miguel Brown to do but they'd just done 'He's A Saint, He's A Sinner' so when I phoned him, he said, 'Another song with sin in the title is no good, is it?' [...] This wasn't meant to be the first single from the album. 'Heart' was agreed to be the first single. It had 'You Know Where You Went Wrong' on the b-side and we'd done artwork for it with Chris and I smiling, because we were so sick of people saying 'please smile'. Then, one day, we were in Paris promoting 'Suburbia', the famous time we had to rehearse miming on the radio and we threw a major wobbler because it was stupid. Anyway, Tom Watkins phoned up and said, 'Right, no one at EMI dares say this to you but everyone thinks you're mad not releasing "It's A Sin" because it's easily the most commercial track on the album. I know you're not going to listen to anything I say but I think you should think about it.' So we did. We were going to use the same artwork, but Jill Carrington – who worked at EMI and later became our manager said, 'No, it's stupid for "It's A Sin".'
@Ray: This one I overscored with a 9. I love the lyrics, sentiment, production to a degree, but they've just overplayed it. The medley with 'I Will Survive' was super-inspired first 100 times I heard it. They don't do enough with it in my opinion, not even the Nightlife tour arrangement was super exciting, and the Barfly version is awful. It's a song I feel I must like, but I just don't so much, and if I were to score it now I'd give it 6 or 7.
But enough about me, here are those who gave it 11s...
@GhettoPrincess:
The production on this is glorious! It’s catchy, dramatic and a clever play on words. Neil sounds particularly great on it too. No wonder it was such a hit.
@Heaven on Earth:
It’s hard to write this commentary, trying to reveal my feelings without being too expressive yet the essentiality of having to explain the way the song has managed to melt some of my society-forced iced heart. The theatricality and the crowded instrument of the song makes me quiver, trying to prevent an outpour of emotion. Unlike the production of “What Have I Done to Deserve This?” which purposefully hides the confusion hinted in its lyrics, the production only shines a spotlight on the heart-striking lyrics. It’s everything I am and I’m happy and sad about it.
Maybe I’m just dramatic, but I don’t know how often I’ve prayed to a god I don’t believe in to reverse my life, to live another life with the knowledge I’ve gained. That’s why the opening lines, “When I look back upon my life/It’s always with a sense of shame,” hits home. Of course, life is wonderful and over the course of my short life, I’ve come to learn that life is wonderful and it’s not worth it to dwell on your shortcomings. Yet there are those nights when the demons of your past come back and haunt you, preventing you from sleeping, pushing the tears out, making you sob out of spiritual pain, terror, confusion, and, yes, loneliness. For me, it’s particularly devastating, for it’s the moments when suicidal thoughts appear, giving me a sense of thrill of what would happen when I take a knife and end my life then and there yet giving me perpetual fear of eternal blackness.
Having grown up in a politically conservative and, at one point, religiously constrictive household, I still fret, despite my newfound freedom, about familial relations. Certainly I know not to give a fuck what others think, and I don’t, but despite my transgressions, it’s still important for me. It feeds to my vulnerability and my need for love. It’s almost terrifying to think how much I can relate to Neil Tennant and understand why he wrote this song; honestly, I’m grateful that this song exists. It reminds me to enjoy the simple pleasures, for I certainly know what it is moral and immoral, and am not moral nor amoral, and always live in the present and look forward to the future. The past is the past, and, even despite those awful lonely nights, it’s the thread of the fabric of whom I am, for better and for worse. It may be poorly sewn, much to my dissatisfaction, but I must remember to be myself. For only when I achieve myself, that’s when I will truly be happy. Yet “it’s a sin,” I think sometimes.
It’s funny to think how much I’d still like this song, but my experience has transcended this to a new elevation. It’s lush and it’s catchy and it’s beautiful, but the emotion is what has set this in stone. And I happily relate to this on a spiritual sense, not just sonic pleasure. It’s certainly the best Pet Shop Boys song, for it manages to become this entity, not just a song. “I’ve always been the one to blame.” Well, not this time, Neil. Not this time, @Heaven on Earth. Not this time. It may be a sin in God’s eyes, but it’s even worse to not be living. For I’d rather enjoy my time on Earth and contribute something of importance, no matter how small, than live in fear of sinning.
Yet I’ll always blame myself. “For I’ve always been the one to blame.”
[Love – Ray]
Here's the 4:
@Bleu Noir: never loved it, hasn't aged well, 4! from me (I've always thought of it as a poor mans p-Machinery)
Here are the others:
@TrendyMüller:
The pomp is funny. I´m not catholic and haven´t had the „pleasure“ to suffer this particular education…and look what´s become of me. Making up numbers and writing them behind song titles.
@Jóga:
It's very good, there's no point in denying it, but sometimes it is too much. [Yeah, my problem too – Ray]
@One Stop Candy Shop:
Religiously infused shame anthem. Never gets old.
@Mikey1701:
I’ve mentioned in the course of this rate that I was raised Catholic and that I was sent to a very strict Catholic school, which makes this track very relatable. I get where Neil is coming from: the Catholic Church considers everything remotely pleasurable to be a sin and as a gay man, I spent years trying to reconcile my sexuality with my (now lapsed) faith. Elsewhere, the production is brilliantly over-the-top and bombastic and it never fails to get me slutdropping. One of my Top 5 1980’s PSB bangers.
@etienne:
The only other PSB early track I find that suffers from overplay. Would have been a 10 back in the day.
@DominoDancing:
An absolute classic. Fantastic arrangement. Over the top? Sure, but it fits the religious imagery perfectly, and those lyrics are just great. You can taste Neil's anger pouring out of every word - this is especially pronounced in the 2000 Glastonbury performance (I wish there was a better recording on YouTube). I roll my eyes at everyone scoring this low.
@Future Lover:
For a single that's immensely popular, this never really grabbed me. I quite like the Barfly Mix, I'd even say it's superior to the original, since it removes the dated samples of the NASA countdown, thunder and everything else that's superfluous. [The NASA samples might be my favourite part, but that's just me.]
@KingBruno:
It’s like the theatrical production tells a story.
@ohnoitisnathan:
A classic.
@Sally_Harper:
If Frollo in Hunchback of Notre Dame’s other secret shame was pop music, this is what Hellfire would sound like. If there is ever a time when I don’t get my absolute life to this song, assume I’m dead. I love everything about it. In particular, I need to highlight the genius little moment on “’cause I didn’t care and I still don’t understAAnd” where Neil sounds like he’s about to belt and then changes his mind. I have an irrational amount of love for it.
@Peer_Gynt10: the song that caught my attention at the brink of becoming a gay teenager; Derek Jarman’s video is such a statement and still means a lot to me.
Nightlife tour arrangement:
Performance performance:
Barfly mix performed live at Parkinson:
