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Being Boring

Writers - Tennant/Lowe
First released - 1990
Original album - Behaviour
Producer - Harold Faltermeyer, Pet Shop Boys
Subsequent albums - Discography, PopArt, Pandemonium, Ultimate, Smash
Other releases - single (UK #20, US Dance Sales #10, US Dance #19); ; live bonus track with single "You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You're Drunk"

With this one song, the Pet Shop Boys gave voice to an entire generation of gay men who to that point and afterward had managed to survive the AIDS epidemic.

It's inspired by a quote by Zelda Fitzgerald, the wife of American author F. Scott Fitzgerald ("… someone's wife, a famous writer in the 1920s…"): "… she refused to be bored chiefly because she wasn't boring. She was conscious that the things she did were the things she had always wanted to do." The fact that Neil found this quote so inspiring is very revealing. He uses it as the springboard for a heartfelt rumination on the path his life has taken, rendered bittersweet by his success and fame amidst the personal and social devastation wrought by AIDS. Neil has stated that this song was inspired, in particular, by the AIDS-related death of his longtime friend Chris Dowell, whose funeral had also inspired "Your Funny Uncle."

The Pet Shop Boys have cited this melancholy but gorgeous, deeply moving track as one of their finest achievements and personal favorites. It has proven a perennial fan and critical favorite as well. Not only are the melody and arrangement beautiful, but Neil writes one of his most moving lyrics, including the marvelous line, "I never dreamt that I would get to be the creature that I always meant to be." (Note again the Zelda Fitzgerald influence.) In a slightly truncated version, this song served as the second single released from the album. Its accompanying video, shot by Bruce Weber, was notorious for its brief glimpses of male rear nudity. But now, like the song itself, it's recognized by many as a true classic of the genre.

In a somewhat (dare I say it?) ironic twist, this song—which to many fans marks the beginning of the Boys' more "mature" phase—owes a major musical debt to those "poppiest" of U.K. music producers of the 1980s, Stock Aitken Waterman. As Neil revealed in a 1996 interview with BBC Radio 1:

We were always fascinated about the way Stock Aitken Waterman would change key for choruses. And so the verse of "Being Boring" was in A minor or D minor, maybe, after we went up a semi-tone into A-flat for the chorus—which we would never have done before. It wasn't an attempt to be mature. It was actually an attempt to be like Stock Aitken Waterman.

In short, the song's musical innovation and maturity emerged at least in part from a source that few would consider likely candidates for such influences. Such are the strange workings of creativity.

Some fans have expressed concern or confusion that Neil would refer to himself as a "creature" in the last verse: "I never dreamt that I would get to be the creature that I always meant to be." Why, they wonder, would Neil use such a deprecating term to describe himself? But this only seems deprecating because we've grown up in a modern popular culture in which the word "creature" is most commonly used to refer to monsters in horror movies (such as The Creature from the Black Lagoon). Neil, however, is using "creature" in a more traditional sense: as any product of creation, particularly a living being. "Creature" and "creation" are, after all, etymologically linked, derived from the same Latin root. We are all "creatures" in this sense. Further, the context strongly suggests the element of self-creation; that is, Neil is in many ways the product of his own conscious decisions—as, to varying degrees, we all are. In essence, Neil has become the person that he had always wanted and strived to become. He is his own creature. The fact that he expresses some surprise at his success at having done so adds both poignancy and a gratifying touch of humility.

It should be noted that the lyrics, with that final verse placing it squarely in the 1990s, seriously risked dating the song beyond redemption. But Neil has adapted it for live performances in subsequent decades and the new century, often revising the line "Some are missing in the 1990s" to "Some were missing…." It's simply too great a song to let a little thing like time render it irrelevant.

Annotations

"From someone's wife, a famous writer in the 1920s" – As noted above, the title and spirit of this song were inspired by a couple of lines from a 1922 magazine article titled "Eulogy on the Flapper" written by Zelda Fitzgerald (1900-1948), wife of the great American author F. Scott Fitzgerald:

"… she refused to be bored chiefly because she wasn't boring. She was conscious that the things she did were the things she had always wanted to do."

Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald were famed in the 1920s as icons of the "Jazz Age": young, glamorous, well-to-do, and reckless, often figuring in the gossip columns for their drunken exploits, which included getting kicked out of posh New York hotels. Both died young: Scott at age 44 from a massive heart attack brought on from years of alcohol abuse, and Zelda at 47 in a fire in the mental institution to which she had been committed. It's worth noting that F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic 1925 novel The Great Gatsby was set on Long Island, which likely inspired the Long Island setting of the "Being Boring" music video. It's also noteworthy that "Eulogy on the Flapper," the Zelda Fitzgerald source for the song's title, is avowedly a eulogy; in some ways the song itself serves as a eulogy for Neil's friend Chris Dowell.
"With a haversack and some trepidation" – A haversack is a bag for carrying one's belongings, similar to a knapsack but usually carried over just one shoulder.
“My shoes were high” – A reference to the high heels and platform shoes fashionable in the 1970s, even among men. Neil has noted on more than one occasion that during that period he would sometimes wear a pair of high-heeled women's shoes that he particularly liked.
"I'd bolted through a closing door" – An expression of belief that, if he hadn't done what he did when he did it, Neil's future would surely have been very different and far more limiting. It's not clear, however, what act precisely he's referring to in these lines. Was it moving to London? Striking up a songwriting friendship with Chris? Promoting his and Chris's work to Bobby O? Or perhaps all of these things and more. It's worth noting that Neil was already 30 years old when "West End Girls" was first released as a single, which is somewhat older than usual for a pop star at the time of his or her first release. This is very likely the inspiration for the "closing door" reference in particular.
"… the creature that I always meant to be" – As discussed above, the word "creature" here doesn't suggest anything negative, but is simply an allusion to the facts that (1) all living things are "creatures" (as parts of "creation") and (2) all people are largely self-creations and thus their own "creatures."
"But I thought, in spite of dreams / You'd be sitting somewhere here with me" – As astutely and succintly stated in a September 13, 2021 uncredited article ("Top 40 Synthpop Songs") in the online edition of Classic Pop magazine, these lines (the "you" being Neil's late friend Chris Dowell) suggest a bit of "survivor's guilt" on Neil's part.
Part of the percussion of "Being Boring" is a studio recreation—not an actual sample—of what Wikipedia has rightly described as "one of the most frequently sampled rhythmic breaks" in popular music, originating with James Brown's 1970 track "Funky Drummer."
A photo in a 1991 issue of Q magazine of a page showing Neil's "lyrics in progress" for this song has given us an extremely rare glimpse at the evolution of those lyrics. Some of the original text is unfortunately illegible, but the following revisions can be discerned:
- "Invitations to teenage parties" was originally "Invitations to circular parties"
- "We had too much time to find for ourselves" – originally "We had too much time to spend with ourselves"
- "We dressed up and fought then thought make amends" – originally "We dressed up and fought, were taught and made friends"
- "With a haversack and some trepidation" – originally "I had to know but felt trepidation"
- "I'd bolted through a closing door" – originally "I'd walked right through a closing door"
One of my site visitors has observed that the lines "All the people I was kissing / Some are here and some are missing" echoes lines from the 1965 Beatles song "In My Life" (written primarily by John Lennon with some help from Paul McCartney), "With lovers and friends I still can recall / Some are dead and some are living." Neil has never, to my knowledge, commented on whether this lyrical echo is intentional.

Mixes/Versions

Officially released

Mixer: Julian Mendelsohn
- Album version (6:50)
  - Available on Behaviour
- 7" mix (4:51)
  - Available on Discography , PopArt, and Party
- Extended Mix (10:40)
  - Available on the Further Listening bonus disc with the Behaviour reissue and on Essential
Mixer: Marshall Jefferson
- Marshall Jefferson 12" Mix (9:04)
Mixer: Goetz Botzenhardt
- Live in Houston (6:45)
  - The version of this same recording released on the Japanese Mini compilation is slightly shorter (6:42), the crowd noise having been edited
Mixer: Pete Gleadall
- Live at War Child (6:31)
  - Available for listening at one time (but no longer) as an "exclusive track" on the official PSB website
- "New PSB Version" (5:52)
  - Available on the Furthermore bonus disc accompanying the special expanded editions of Nonetheless
Mixer: Stuart Price
- Pandemonium CD live version (5:17)

Official but unreleased

Mixer: Peter Schwartz
- Nightlife Tour studio arrangement for rehearsal (6:15)
  - This is the same arrangement as in the officially released "Live in Houston" track noted above, only this is the studio rehearsal track as opposed to an actual live recording.
Mixer: Marshall Jefferson
- Marshall Jefferson 7-inch mix (4:20)
  - Appears on an official EMI reference CD by Abbey Road Studios designed for client review before determing the tracks for the 2001 reissues bonus Further Listening discs.

List cross-references

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