We've arrived at our #1 favorite album of all-time. Thank you for taking the time to read about this, and the other nine albums that comprise my Top 10. It's been fun to revisit these gems, and it's compelled me to start re-listening to them throughout each day.
Here, then, is # 1:
Pet Shop Boys / Very (1993)
A friend once relayed a conversation he'd had with someone about me. The someone, knowing I was biracial (Caucasian and African-American), asked my friend: "Do you know if Matt considers himself white or black?" My friend replied, "I think that Matt considers himself gay."
I'm relaying that conversation just now because, though humorous, it is true that coming out and living my life as an out gay man has probably been more defining that most other aspects of my life, and the album Very came along at a crucial juncture in that regard. Very was, in many ways, like a rudimentary therapist. Listening to it (over and over again), beginning at age 18, was like part-learning curve, and part-familiarity. The gamut of situations and emotions described in its twelve tracks were very much what I was going through -- or would be going through soon -- in my life.
The Pet Shop Boys have always contended that their music is for everyone, not just the LGBT community. And, to a certain extent, that is quite true. Let's face it, though: Very is a pretty gay album.
Very opens with Can You Forgive Her?, an ode to lost youth, of questioning one's sexuality, and of dealing with the taunting that invariably arose when one's masculinity didn't measure up to expectations. Dreaming of the Queen is about the AIDS crisis. To Speak Is a Sin provides a morose look at life in a gay bar for ageing patrons, too shy and/or bitter to engage with one other. And, of course, Go West finishes the album in a big way. Pet Shop Boys take the Village People's song, add a little to it, and turn it into a stirring anthem of those in the LGBT community looking for greener pastures of peace, safety and tranquility.
Of course, it can be possible to look at the aforementioned songs in a different light. That is part of what made Pet Shop Boys' writing so great: the subtext. Indeed, there are more straightforward tracks on Very. You can't get more bombastically in love than I Wouldn't Normally Do This Kind of Thing, though, with it's title, there is an intimation of reserve, of perhaps realizing you may be getting quite carried away. Liberation is suffused with the appreciation of a more realized, relaxed sort of love.
One and One Make Five and One In a Million are both songs where one's love is teetering on the edge, when you're insecure and not at all certain if the relationship you're in will last. Young Offender immediately pulls you in with its strong, almost-video game-like sound, and tells the story of a potential May to December couple. And then there's A Different Point of View, one of my top 3 favorite Pet Shop Boys songs. It is chaotic, it is raw, and it is quite longing and beautiful.
I could relate to most of the songs on Very as an 18 and 19-year-old young man who was attempting to become comfortable with his sexuality, though To Speak Is a Sin took awhile to fully grasp. That one needs a few years under the belt in order to truly appreciate.
In truth, Very has aged remarkably well. Even though some of it speaks to a more heightened time of AIDS awareness, or of life in gay bars when now there are far fewer of them, the themes are timeless. We all fall in love, many of us have had our hearts wounded, we've perhaps lost friends to AIDS or some other illness, and we've sometimes longed for better lives.
If you can relate to any of those things, you can relate to Very. I know I have, for nearly a quarter of a century.
Comments
Post a Comment