3.
Majestic is the word.
hate it and lost interest in the band as a result
instead of providing a utopian ideal, it presents a harrowing reality
I guess most of us can see ourselves in those words and we most likely all lived them.
Neil: 'Left to My Own Devices' was an experiment in seeing how mundane a pop song could be, before setting it against extravagant music.
3. Left To My Own Devices
9.1722222222
AUS #48 BEL #23 NL #18 FIN #8 GER #9 IRL #3 ITA #14 NZ #22 POL Radio Three #9 SPA #5 UK #4 US Billboard Hot 100 #84 US Dance #8 US Maxi-Singles #25
Highest score: 11x3 (
@One Stop Candy Shop,
@Auntie Beryl,
@etcetera),
10x20 (the most of all songs in the rate) (
@Ray,
@Farnaby,
@RaggedTiger,
@VeryPSB,
@Jóga,
@SmashHitter,
@DominoDancing,
@Bleu Noir,
@JonBcn,
@slurmjunkie,
@Eric Generic,
@TrendyMüller,
@CorgiCorgiCorgi,
@KingBruno,
@Scoundrel_Days,
@ohnoitisnathan,
@tylerc904,
@Peer_Gynt10,
@rawkey,
@Heaven on Earth)
Lowest score: 4 (
@GhettoPrincess)
Neil: 'Left To My Own Devices' started off as an instrumental Chris wrote in EMI's demo studio in Abbey Road. We had asked Trevor Horn to do a song with us but we hadn't written it. We'd got to know him while making
Actually in Sarm West.
Chris: We'd always liked his productions.
Neil: I've always liked big orchestral pop music. Trevor comes out of that school of production. Also, he was fun. We'd chat with him in the studio and have a laugh.
Chris: He's very good at anecdotes. He's always got one about being in a backing band for someone up in some Northern club.
Neil: Hazell Dean, for instance.
Chris: It's hilarious.
Neil: So we thought it would be fun to work with him, and indeed it was. We went into Abbey Road, the day before we'd arranged to meet him, to write something. Chris was doodling on the keyboard, and I was reading the
Melody Maker and making phone calls and thinking 'I can't be bothered – can we go out for lunch?' and suddenly Chris got a bassline and I suggested we put it with these chords he had and it sounded quite good. Chris was in quite a hard-working mood, so he programmed it and I progressed onto the
NME and then I realised – with joy – that I was singing to myself 'left to my own devices I probably would'. I don't know where it came from – it certainly wasn't
Melody Maker.
Chris: It was more like a Motown song, to begin with.
Neil: The demo was much more moronic. It was slower than the finished record. I played Trevor a cassette of this instrumental. He was quite interested in working with us, but when the track was playing it got so distorted that he stood up and turned it down in case it damaged his speakers. A very Trevor moment. He said he didn't want to judge this song because it had no words, apart from 'Left to my own devices'. Two mornings later I sat down at the typewriter, I thought, 'I've got to write this bloody song'. I didn't get out of bed at half past ten, I used to get out of bed at half past nine, as I still do [THIS IS BRAND NEW INFORMATION – Ray] but I just thought it sounded better. I know that the 'party animal' was my friend Jon Savage because he always phoned up in the morning. Actually he's not a party animal but in the Eighties he'd go out more and we'd talk about what had been going on. Originally it was going to be 'drink some tea, maybe if you're with me, we'll drink some coffee'. [...] The line 'pick up some brochures about the sun'...sitting in front of me were some brochures about holidays in Italy, because I knew a travel agent who'd given me these brochures about Italian villas. And then it goes into a major childhood experience: 'I was always told that you should join a club...' Which is completely not true, by the way. That's when I realised what the song was about – that this person goes through life always doing what he wanted to do. I liked the idea of writing a really up pop song about being left alone.
Chris: I wonder what I would do if I was left alone.
Neil: One of the first songs Chris and I ever wrote [was] 'It's Not A Crime'. The rest of the lyrics went: 'Love is all I want to see/now I want you here with me/through the morning afternoon/all night long is none too soon/and oh I've got the time/I've got the time/and oh it's not a crime/it's not a crime/Now I've fixed it we're all alone/don't look back and don't go home/through the morning afternoon/lock the door and lose the key...'
Chris: Of course it was a crime then. But it was a bloody good song.
Neil: I mentioned it should sound like Debussy, and Trevor said, 'I've always wanted to do Debussy to a disco beat'. I was going to mention Che Guevara in 'Domino Dancing'. I'd been very interested in him since I was 14. So I paired him with Debussy to combine revolution with beauty. Writing a book and going on the stage were both things I had wanted to do when I was young.
Chris: I just wanted to get married and settle down with kids.
Neil: Trevor Horn had this fantastic idea that we would programme all the keyboards and the computers, we would commission an orchestral arrangement, and then we would go in and record the whole thing live: the machines, the orchestra and the vocal. And it would all be done in one day. Six months later the record was finished. We did the orchestral session at Abbey Road, and we were slightly appalled by it when we first heard it. Trevor said, 'now, don't worry – if we don't like anything we can edit it out'. But we were quite shocked.
Chris: There was too much of it.
Neil: We did the 7" version much later. I think we improved it. Steve Lipson plays guitar, and we added some extra backing vocals – Trevor got his made Bruce Woolley to sing backing vocals on it because he could sound like me and I wasn't available.
The Michael Roberts photographs, in which Chris and Neil pose with medieval armour, with a suspended bicycle wheel overhead, have a surrealist or dadaist overtone, and reference the work of artists such as Marcel Duchamp, who famously set a bicycle wheel on a stool. Roberts, then fashion editor for
Tatler, defined that magazine's influential look in the 1980s. He was renowned for his use of models off the street (although these were usually public schoolboys with Bruce Weber looks) [AWKWARD – Ray] and for referencing vintage themes. Mark Farrow: 'I hated those pictures, which I thought were really contrived and pretentious, so I covered them up.'
@Ray: Bye, my last 10. I love everything about this. The grandiosity. The orchestra. The BIGNESS. The lyrics. The extra verse in the
Introspective mix. 'Che Guevara's drinking tea/He reads about a new device/and takes to the stage in a secret life'. HOW GOOD IS THIS. It's danceable, it's huge, it's brilliant. No other band could possibly do this. The video
is unfortunate (the boys mentioned that they hated the fact it looked like they were stomping over the watchers), but it can't ruin the fact this song is a BAWP.
11s:
@One Stop Candy Shop:
Majestic is the word. LTMOD ticks off every box at PBS-bingo. Strings! Beats! Drama! Disco! Literary references! Talk-singing! Sing-singing! Such a glorious moment.
...and that's it, so here is the rest.
@Heaven on Earth:
“I was a lonely boy, no strength, no joy/In a world of my own at the back of the garden/I didn’t want to compete, or play out in the street/For in a secret life, I was a round head general” describes my childhood perfectly. Pet Shop Boys has a way of somehow reading my life and my feelings and putting all the mess into song. For that, I appreciate them.
But “Left to My Devices” means more to me than a single verse, profound as it is. It’s a brilliant dance song that suggests a carefree lifestyle if one truly had the freedom. It’s funny how people like to tout the U.S., my country, as the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, when it’s not really freedom. Yes, for all our fucked-up problems, we do provide avenues for marvelous opportunities, if it in recent times such avenues have been dissipating. No, we are not really free, nor born so like that shmaltzy Andy Williams song would suggest, as we are always constricted by rules, legally and personally. In many ways, this song allows one to dance away the night, to escape the rigid jail we live in for just a moment, as suggested in “Hit Music,” but instead of providing a utopian ideal, it presents a harrowing reality.
(
@Heaven on Earth writes the BEST commentary.)
@JonBcn:
My second choice for 11 points. Lost out for sentimental reasons to my eventual choice, but for me musically and lyrically this is their finest moment on their finest ‘album’.
@etienne:
Unpopular opinion alert but I’ve never really been into this. The only let down on the album for me
@DominoDancing:
This is one of their best set of lyrics set to one of their best orchestral arrangements - it's no surprise they went back to Trevor Horn for an album, even if it took them a while. The bassline in particular is just marvelous.
@Mikey1701:
Controversial Opinion Klaxon! I’m baffled by how popular this seems to be within the fandom. I like the idea of a bombastic pop song detailing the boring minutiae of everyday life, but aside from the “But in the back of my head I heard distant feet/ Che Guevara and Debussy to a disco beat” there’s actually very little that I like. And for somebody who enjoys 12 minute extended remixes, I have always felt that the album version is far too long and the 7’ Mix is much more palatable. With all this said- I do want to end this commentary by saying how much I love the new Super Version, which transforms the track into a stomping electro-house anthem. When they performed it on the recent tour, it brought the house down and (true to form) I slutdropped [so...you were shaking your de bussy...?]
all over the arena. I’d give the original a 5, the Super Version an 8, so I’ll split the difference and settle for 6.5.
@Future Lover:
Truly epic, but somehow never really became a proper 10/10 moment. That chorus is irresistible!
@TrendyMüller:
„I don´t want to compete, I don´t WANT TO PLAY OUT IN THE STREET“? This is hitting home hard! I guess most of us can see ourselves in those words and we most likely all lived them.
@KingBruno:
That orchestra basically makes the whole song. They worked very hard for this one, but the result is absolutely amazing.
@ohnoitisnathan:
Rating the single version. Sometimes I think this song could have been written about me. "Learn to ignore what the photographer saw" is one of the best lines in a song ever. A contender for my 11. [Because of that line I ALWAYS thought it was actually about The Sun, and I still don't know whether to believe Neil who insists 'We All Feel Better In The Dark' is about candlelight dinners.]
@Sally_Harper:
This sounds like a mix of an Abba song I can’t place and a song about being a stripper that was used on Gossip Girl once, which I also can’t place, so, all in all an unhelpful description. Still, I’m not complaining!
@Peer_Gynt10:
I used to hate it and lost interest in the band as a result; it only took me 2 ½ decades to appreciate its brilliance; the album version is out of this world.
Trevor Horn tribute full length live:
1989 Wembley:
Disco version:
Super version (studio)
Frankie Knuckles:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30V1WuiALc0
Discovery medley with 'Rhythm Of The Night' which kills me with how perfect it is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coOMtrexD_Q
So... your top two is 'West End Girls' and 'What Have I Done To Deserve This?'. Tomorrow will be a day of numbers. I will be putting up the averages for
Introspective and scores after each three voters. And on Saturday you will find out what the final result was. And also what would have happened if
@Sweet Music's 0 for 'Rent' didn't happen. And possibly some more things...
