For Your Own Good
Writers - Tennant/Lowe
First released - 1999
Original album - Nightlife
Producer - Pet Shop Boys, Rollo
Subsequent albums - (none)
Other releases - (none)
Soft, ominous, dissonant chords introduce the opening track on Nightlife, which also served as the opening number of the concerts on PSB's 1999 U.S. tour. Booming bass and multitracked female background vocals heighten a general air of desperation. Neil has stated that "For Your Own Good" is sung from the perspective of a woman waiting late at night for her lover to call, though she knows he's galivanting about. We're left not knowing the outcome of this little domestic drama—at least for the time being. (But if you feel like "skipping ahead," so to speak, check out the album's final track.)
Incidentally, "For Your Own Good" was originally written for or at least seriously considered for inclusion in the Pet Shop Boys' musical Closer to Heaven (more about that just below in the entry for the song with that title), but it didn't make the final cut. Chris and Neil recorded a demo of that early version of the song, with a "poppier," more upbeat sound and slightly different lyrics.
Annotations
- "So why don't you stay with the lover you need and not the devil you pay?" – Some listeners may interpret these lines as a reference to prostitution, with the "devil" to be paid either the prostitute herself or her pimp. But that's not necessarily the case. Neil may instead be engaging in wordplay with an old cliché (as he so often does), in this case the expression "the devil to pay." If someone has "the devil to pay" or must "pay the devil," it means they now face a high price or a great deal of trouble for something they've done—usually something they shouldn't have being doing in the first place. So the song's narrator may be warning her straying lover that, though he may enjoy cheating on her, he will end up paying for it in the end. So why not avoid the eventual high cost and simply remain faithful to her? After all, it would be—as the song repeatedly asserts—for his own good.
- Speaking of prostitution, one of my site visitors has suggested that this song is about male prostitution in particular. Although Neil has clearly asserted that his narrative persona in this song is a woman, it's possible that in doing so he's "dodging the real issue," so to speak, seeking to avoid a perhaps more accurate but much more controversial interpretation for his own reasons, commercial or otherwise. I can't say that I agree wholeheartedly with this interpretation, but I do admit that it's intriguing.
Mixes/Versions
Officially released
- Mixer: Rollo
- Album version (5:12)
Official but unreleased
- Mixer: Rollo
- Album version with extended fade (5:19)
- Mixer: Peter Schwartz
- Nightlife Tour studio arrangement for rehearsal (5:38)
- Mixer: [unknown at this time]
- Demo (3:47)
List cross-references
- 3 PSB "Easter eggs"
- The key signatures of selected PSB songs
- Songs that Neil sings avowedly using a female lyrical persona
- What it's about: Neil's succinct statements on what a song is "about"
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