I DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU WANT BUT I CAN’T GIVE IT ANYMORE

Pet Shop Boys

These two continue to go their own sweet way, making exactly the sort of songs they want to and to hell with everything else. For some bands, this obviously shortens their shelf life (Cast, anyone?) and for others, like New Order for instance, it works beautifully. Now I could describe this as one of their frothy but fun string-laden pop classics, but that would totally defeat the object here. The Pet Shop Boys are one of those rare bands that could only have come from the British Isles. Honestly, can you imagine Hootie and the Blowfish singing an old Village People song whilst wearing oversize traffic cones on their heads? Or Bryan Adams writing a faintly eerie pop song about suburban life? Can you? Can you really? The Pet Shop Boys are British, they’re ours and we must cherish them.

SHE

Elvis Costello

It’s karaoke night at the local pub. The 12-year-old girl has just squeaked out I Will Survive, some middle-aged couple have muddled their way through I Got You Babe and some poor kid who never wanted to go up there anyway has managed two lines of Wonderwall before going silent and walking away from the stage amidst embarrassed applause. Your host for the evening is desperately trying to get a song out of somebody, anybody. Then some bloke with a hat volunteers. His voice is totally unsuited to ballads, but by God he’s going to go for it. He tries his heart out, he really does and you can sense that he believes, he really believes he can do it. He can’t. At the end of the song he walks off, dejected, knowing that it wasn’t quite enough. Then a recently married couple bounce on to the stage, launch into When You’re Gone and everyone leaves. Fin.