Love Is the Law

Writers - Tennant/Lowe
First released - 2024
Original album - Nonetheless
Producer - James Ford
Subsequent albums - none
Other releases - none

Is this a song about prostitution, in which "love" is simply a euphemism for "sex," or does it use prostitution as an extended metaphor, enabling the Pet Shop Boys to employ language and imagery commonly associated with the world's oldest profession to make their points about love? Possibly both.

The final song on Nonetheless is, at least to the ears of this listener, its most profound. Regarding its inspiration, Neil told interviewer Rob Sheffield for Rolling Stone (May 24, 2024) that he "was reading this massive biography about Oscar Wilde that came out just before lockdown. Oscar Wilde, after he comes out of prison, ends up in Nice, in the south of France, and he’s sitting beside the Promenade des Anglais, watching all the sexual transactions taking place." So it would appear that "Love Is the Law" is largely concerned with such "sexual transactions."

The music is serious-sounding, even ominous, as well as deceptively complicated. The syncopation of its block piano chords, often striking slightly ahead of the beat, creates an atmosphere of agitation and foreboding. For their part, the lyrics blend philosophy and politics. Their central contention is that "Love is the law that must be obeyed," and any attempts to circumvent it are both futile and unnatural. The chorus is particularly striking:

Love is the law
But you can't regulate it
The desire is so strong
And you won't moderate it

As they've suggested several times before in their songs (as in "Love Comes Quickly" and "Before"), the Boys maintain that, while love may not come to everybody, when it does come, it's inescapable ("Catch it like a cold / No one is immune"). Whether found in romantic getaways ("Such happy days spent in idleness / Now the sea is warm and the wine is young") or in more venal transactions ("While every night there's a busy trade"), love will have its way.

While we're on the subject of venal transactions, this song is replete with sexual innuendo as well as specific references to prostitution: "Love's a profession plied beneath the moon,… a trick of the trade,… a profession as old as time." Yet the overall tone, not to mention various other lines, would suggest that there's a lot more to this song than a mere paean to sex for hire. After all, prostitution is, at least in most cases and places, very much against the law, whereas this song staunchly asserts that love is the law. Or is that precisely the tension the Boys are aiming for?

Neil and Chris are issuing a firm warning. As with any law, there's a penalty for violating it, and "every day the price is paid." Any individual or society standing in its way is doomed to failure or perhaps even outright disaster. For love is the law.

Annotations

—is somewhat more difficult to interpret than the first. But I believe it's suggesting that even if one's lover is in some ways far less than ideal (and, let's face it, nobody's perfect), if there's truly love, then it's easy to love them. And if that sounds like circular logic, it's only because of love's often contradictary nature. Who can explain love? Of course, if you take the view that the song is "about" prostitution, then these lines make a little more sense, alluding to sexual clients from the perspective of a prostitute.

List cross-references