Neil Tennant co-wrote a musical at Primary School and soon decided that “learning other people’s songs was hard work compared with making up your own”. He’s chosen some from the Pet Shop Boys’ 40-year catalogue, hits and obscurities, in ‘One Hundred Lyrics and a Poem’, just out in paperback, and added fascinating notes about their context and composition. This very funny and revealing conversation lands on the following …
... the first song he ever wrote
… auditioning for Rocket Records in 1975
… does songwriting have rules?
… how Chris Lowe tamed his inner “musical snob”
… rap, Brecht-Weill, Betjeman, Noel Coward, My Fair Lady and the art of “speak-singing”
… the decades of lyrics stored in our brains
… the Songwriting Bootcamp that produced What Have I Done To Deserve This?
… the essence of melancholy (and the chord that expresses it)
… “the sound of words is often more important than the sense”
… whether Dylan deserved the Nobel Prize for Literature
… West End Girls and whether to rap in English or American
… the writing of King's Cross, Cricket Wife, Odd Man Out and I Made My Excuses And Left
… “Robert Maxwell stole my pension!”
… and the “geology of my life” in diaries that one day might make a memoir.
Order ‘One Hundred Lyrics And a Poem’ here: https://www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571397891-one-hundred-lyrics-and-a-poem/
And ‘Pet Shop Boys: Volume’ here: https://shop.petshopboys.co.uk/gb/pet-shop-boys-volume/9780500027479.html
Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear
","author_name":"Mark Ellen, David Hepworth and Alex Gold"}