Give Stupidity a Chance

Writers - Tennant/Lowe
First released - 2019
Original album - Agenda (EP)
Producer - Pet Shop Boys, Tim Powell
Subsequent albums -(none)
Other releases - (none)

Not exactly an exercise in subtlety but, perhaps in our current sociopolitical climate, subtlety isn't what's called for.

First mentioned publicly by Neil in a June 2018 onstage "conversation" at Oxford University, he described it at that time as a song about populism. As he later said to another interviewer, "It's close to a protest song, but it's also funny." And the official PSB website calls it "a satirical song about the poor quality of political leadership in the modern world." It is, in fact, one of three avowedly satirical songs among the four on their 2019 EP Agenda, all of which were recorded in late 2018.

Opening with a couplet that pretty much summarizes the entire narrative that follows—

Intelligent people have had their say
It's time for the foolish to show the way

—the lyrics of this brief song (less than three minutes in length) make pointed stabs at the U.S. presidency of Donald Trump. This becomes most apparent in its second bridge:

Forget political correctness
Let's talk man to man
Chicks are always up for it
You gotta grab whatever you can

This essentially paraphrases the well-publicized comment Trump made in his notorious 2015 interview with radio presenter Billy Bush—"Grab 'em by the pussy"—the sort of language that, in an earlier, more decorous age would have damned a candidacy, but which had little political fallout in these far cruder, far more jaded times. To be sure, other references in the song to wealth, narcissism, cronyism, and corruption also find their primary inspiration in Trump.

It would be wrong to think, however, that this song is only about one man. The song's official lyric video employs scenes from North Korea, and given Neil's well-known opposition to Brexit, it's not hard to imagine that the rise of populism beyond American shores greatly concerns him as well.

While Neil undoubtedly disapproves of "giving stupidity a chance" in the political realm, he also taps into a very real, perhaps only partly unconscious motivation in the public sphere. After all, if people are thoroughly dissatisfied with the state of the world after it's been run for so long by presumably intelligent people, then why wouldn't they pin their hopes for a change on somebody who's presumably less intelligent? Do desperate times indeed call for desperate measures? If that's the case, then giving stupidity a chance may be one of the most desperate measures of all. But what people fail to understand is that, rather than making things better than they were before, stupidity will probably make things even worse.

The song's refrain hints broadly at the possible consequences:

Let's lead this world a merry dance
Let's give stupidity a chance

But is it just a dance of thoughtless abandon, or something even more dangerous? After all, a centuries-old trope refers to what is known in various languages as the danse macabre, the totentanz, the "dance of death," in which the Grim Reaper leads everyone—high and low, rich and poor—in the universal dance of mortality. Maybe that's the ultimate expression of populism.

Annotations

"Why face the facts when you can just feel the feelings?" – This line echoes the catchphrase "Facts don't care about your feelings," apparently first used in 2015 by U.S. conservative political commentator Ben Shapiro in reference to criticism he had received for disregarding the personal pronouns preferred by transgender celebrity Caitlyn Jenner. He would use this same phrase again in later situations, and it has been picked up by others in the years since. Without Neil's commentary on the subject, however, there's no way to know for sure whether it's an intentional echo on his part. But it's worth noting that this line in the song seems to run counter, at least in some ways, to Shapiro's statement.
"We've heard quite enough of experts and their dealings" – As writer Ben Beaumont-Thomas of The Guardian noted just after this song premiered, this line was likely inspired by a famous comment made by U.K. conservative politician Michael Gove, who in defense of Brexit once told an interviewer that "the people of this country have had enough of experts from organisations with acronyms saying they know what is best and getting it consistently wrong."
"I mean WTF?!" – For the benefit of non-native English speakers who may not be familiar with this bit of circumspect shorthand, WTF stands for "What the fuck?!" a rather common (in more than one sense) expression of extremely strong dismay. The use afterward (in the printed lyrics) of both a question mark and exclamation point—together known as an "interrobang," although a separate symbol ( ‽ ) has been devised for it as well—is more or less "punctuationally correct" seeing as how it's an exclamatory rhetorical question.
"Let's shock and awe the world with idiotic bigotry" – The term "shock and awe" was coined in 1996 by the U.S. political theorists/advisors Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade to describe the tactic of suddenly using "overwhelming power and spectacular displays of force to paralyze the enemy's perception of the battlefield and destroy its will to fight." Although it has many historical precedents, its most famous application (during which the phrase entered common parlance via the media) was the massive barrage of missile strikes on Baghdad at the start of the 2003 invasion of Iraq by a U.S.-led coalition. In this song, of course, the phrase is used metaphorically, applied not to a military invasion but rather to something more cultural—but no less psychological—in nature.
"Forget political correctness" – Although the term political correctness has been around for hundreds of years, it didn't gain its current common meaning until the 1970s, when it began to be used to refer to language and behavior designed to avoid offending others, in particular persons or groups regarded as disadvantaged or oppressed. Political correctness is often derided—most often but not exclusively by those on the more conservative side of the political spectrum—as a means of limiting freedom of speech and instigating "thought control." As a result, the term has gained strongly negative connotations and is now generally avoided by those who nevertheless strive to adhere to it.
"a peach-perfect piece of ass" – Piece of ass is vulgar American slang for a voluptuous, physically attractive woman when she's regarded purely as a sex-object. Adding peach-perfect to the description adds assorted connotations of sweetness, roundness, firmness—use your imagination—with the bonus emphasis of alliteration. It's quite telling that the song employs the American "ass" rather than the British "arse" in both its official lyrics and in Neil's pronunciation, almost certainly indicative of its inspiration being Donald Trump. In fact, Trump himself was infamously quoted in a 1991 interview with Esquire magazine, "You know, it doesn't really matter what [the media] write as long as you've got a young and beautiful piece of ass." Also, as one of my site visitors has pointed out, it's a popular internet convention to employ a peach emoji as "code" for a round butt or as self-censorship of the word "ass."
"Not a total dumb-cluck" – More linguistic circumspection, although there's some debate over which came first in English slang: "dumb-cluck" or the phrase for which it's commonly regarded as a euphemism, "dumb-fuck." If "dumb-cluck" came first, then "dumb-fuck" is simply a vulgar corruption; if "dumb-fuck" came first, then "dumb-cluck" is indeed a euphemism. In either case, however, the meaning is absolutely the same: an extremely stupid person. If someone is "not a total dumb-cluck," that suggests he or she may still be stupid, but not as stupid as most believe, and possibly even rather smart in some ways—while still being rather stupid in others. In this way it somewhat echoes a line from the Boys' 2006 single "I'm with Stupid": "Is stupid really stupid or a different kind of smart?"

List cross-references

Pet Shop Boys Satire
PSB songs for which the Boys have acknowledged the influence of specific tracks by other artists
The key signatures of selected PSB songs
What it's about: Neil's succinct statements on what a song is "about"
The Pet Shop Boys' 10 greatest protest songs (in an explanatory note following the main list)

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