Tag Archives: Pet Shop Boys

Online review – BBC Radio 2’s Piano Room: Pet Shop Boys

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by Ben Hogwood

If you’ve been keeping an eye on Arcana lately you will know that we in turn have been keeping a close eye on the month of largely superb music we’ve enjoyed from the BBC Radio 2 Piano Room.

Having watched Bruce Hornsby, and recommended a further five ‘best’ songs from the month, I finally got round to watching the Pet Shop Boys‘ trio of tracks from the Maida Vale studios and the BBC Concert Orchestra. Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe are no strangers to the orchestra, with a Proms performance and a ballet score under their belts – so this was an obvious and welcome choice to close a season that has shown – again – how pop and orchestral music can complement each other so well in the right environment.

They started with the most obvious candidate – Left To My Own Devices, probably the most orchestral of their hits to date. Now fully realised with the BBC forces, it sounded wonderful, and I always wish someone would make a remix based around the chord they reach where Neil sings about setting “Che Guavara and Debussy to a disco beat”. This was a joyous performance.

The next was a likely candidate too, the most recent single Loneliness, transposed down a tone but still sounding mighty fine to these ears. Neil Tennant’s voice still has the purity it had in the 1980s but on a song like Loneliness the aching emotion in the song felt clearer, with excellent support from the backing singers and the exquisitely voiced BBC Concert Orchestra, piquant woodwind to the fore.

The big surprise was saved until last. Mott The Hoople‘s All The Young Dudes was completely reinvented in this performance. I have to be honest and say I’m still not sure about the final version – but that’s on me, not Tennant or Lowe! The reason for my lack of wholesome praise at this point is because the original is so well known, and this cover is a more or less complete reinvention – making you hear the song in a whole new light. Tennant obviously loves the track and his vocal was powerful and on point, while the electronic / acoustic balance was thick and fuzzy but in a way that looks set to suit the chromatic harmony. An effective cover version for sure…and hopefully one to grow into!

You can watch the whole Pet Shop Boys piano room session on the BBC iPlayer

Published post no.2,100 – Monday 26 February 2024

The Borrowers – Village People: Go West

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What tune does it use?

The much-loved Canon by the 17th century composer Johann Pachelbel.

Pachelbel (1653-1706) was a composer and organist who seems destined to be celebrated for just one work. He seemed to specialise working in very strict forms such as the chaconne* and the canon, whose rules dictate that once the harmonic progression is heard it must be repeated with almost exact precision for the rest of the piece. What happens above this progression is up to the composer.

This way of working fits in perfectly with pop music, because a lot of pop songs use the same chord progressions throughout – so to make a song over a predetermined chord sequence is a great challenge. The Village People did it in their use of Pachelbel’s Canon:

So did Pet Shop Boys, in their cover of the same song:

Even Kylie Minogue and her production / writing team of Stock Aitken & Waterman used a very similar sequence for the chorus of I Should Be So Lucky. Indeed Pete Waterman went as far as to describe it as ‘almost the godfather of pop music’. Having listened closely the references are not quite as obvious…but Pete’s comment illustrates how it was inevitable Arcana would be mentioning this piece early on!

Yet another pop song to use the chords is an altogether different dance track, The Farm’s 1990 hit All Together Now. It even adopts the same key as the Village People:

How does it work?

It really is as simple as a direct lift of the chord progression from the whole Canon. Village People take the chord structure as outlined in the clip below:

They even keep it in the same key as the original:

What else is new?

The Canon has been arranged for literally hundreds of musical combinations – but it is worth remembering it is not the only piece of note by Pachelbel. Here is his Chaconne in F minor, for instance. Who can spot any pop tune that uses this? I can’t yet…but it wouldn’t sound out of place in a record by any band from the so-called ‘Canterbury scene’!

Glossary

*chaconne – a form of music commonly used in Pachelbel’s time, where a repeated, pre-determined cell of chords and / or bass-line would become the foundation for a whole piece