It’s time to get back to my favorite decade. For the month of March, I’ll be looking back at some of my favorite jams from the 80s. These songs often came to me via MTV or the radio. NYC-area stations WDRE, WPLJ, WNEW, K-ROCK and Z100 introduced me to everything from irresistible pop confections to under-the-radar post-punk anthems. I would not be who I am today if it weren’t for the 80s. It was the decade when I discovered music can be a truly powerful thing. #31DaysOf80sSongs
The year “West End Girls” soared to the top of the charts in the U.S. was momentous. Most synth pop outfits gained their following on the fringes. Pet Shop Boys, in contrast, broke through the ceiling. The single was an anomaly, but in many ways the rest of the Please album was more substantive. Three other singles came off the album: “Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots of Money)”, “Suburbia” and “Love Comes Quickly”. The latter is one of my all-time favorite PSB tracks and the song that gets today’s nod on the Mental Jukebox.
“Love Comes Quickly” is a dance song, but not in the fast, upbeat tempo that many other PSB songs employ, like “Always On My Mind”, “So Hard”, “Domino Dancing” and “It’s A Sin”. “Love Comes Quickly” was a quiet groove that settles in mid-tempo at the beginning and stays there. The synth bass hooks lure you in, but it’s the lyrics and Tennant’s tenor vocals that are the spotlight. I saw a YouTube video of their London Royal Opera House performance of the song two years ago. Tennant goes down an octave only on the one line that soars into the stratosphere in the original studio recording: “You can fly away to the end of the world. But where does it get you?” Other than that, he sounds remarkably sharp – and, together with Lowe, prove the resiliency of their brand of synth pop near 40 years later.
“Sooner or later, sooner or later, this happens to everyone.”