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I Wouldn't Normally Do This Kind of Thing

Writers - Tennant/Lowe
First released - 1993
Original album - Very
Producer - Pet Shop Boys, Stephen Hague
Subsequent albums - Disco 2, PopArt, Smash
Other releases - single (UK #13, US Dance #2)

A short, simple, yet highly melodic piano-driven song that celebrates the exhilaration one feels at falling deeply in love, maybe for the first time. It's also superbly structured with its parallel verses, each prompting the listener to ask a question, which the narrator is then pleased to answer. Succinct, with not a moment wasted, the original Very album version is an absolute gem.

Actually, the song's genesis has nothing to do with being in love. Neil was embarking on a day trip from London to Edinburgh, and on his way via taxi to Heathrow Airport he thought to himself, "I wouldn't normally do this kind of thing"—that is, fly from one place to another and back in a single day. He couldn't get the phrase out of his head, and it soon evolved into a song. He and Chris created the demo for it in the studio the very next day.

Some early critics commented on the song's almost Beatlesque quality, which may have inspired what subsequently happened to it for the single version and its video. Remixed and extended by the Beatmasters, the instrumentation is fleshed out significantly, nearly becoming "busy" in the process. Prominent in the mix, especially toward the end, are backwards percussion effects, droning Indian tamburas, and a piccolo trumpet, all strongly reminiscent of circa-1967 Beatles (think "Penny Lane"). In some mixes it even has a "false ending"—a trick of which the Beatles were fond (as in "Hello, Goodbye" and "Strawberry Fields Forever," among others), in which the song seems to end but then unexpectedly resumes for another go-round.

The video plays on this as well, with Neil and Chris, wearing mop-top wigs, cavorting (and doing various things they wouldn't normally do, such as fighting each other with baseball bats) amidst computerized psychedelia and a pair of futuristic go-go dancers. It's almost as if they're suggesting that this is what Lennon and McCartney (as well as the 1960s in general) might have been like if that decade had been blessed with nineties technology. As Neil himself said in an interview around the time Very was released, "I'm sure if The Beatles had formed in 1983, they would've been a duo. John and Paul would be using synths and drum machines instead of George and Ringo." Fascinating concept, brilliant execution, and a terrific single—at least in this writer's opinion, one of the high points of the Pet Shop Boys' career.

Annotations

Neil sings of feeling like taking all his clothes off and "dancing to The Rite of Spring," which one might describe as an almost orgiastic expression of the ecstasy he's experiencing in love. The Rite of Spring ballet score is one of the greatest works by the Russian (and later, naturalized American) composer Igor Stravinsky. The May 29, 1913 Paris premiere of the ballet is famed for having very nearly caused a riot on account of its daring, sexually provocative (at least for the time) choreography and avant-garde music, unlike anything its audience had ever seen or heard before. It's possible, perhaps even likely, that Neil got the idea for this line from an anecdote related by the famed British film director Ken Russell in his 1989 autobiography A British Picture (published in the U.S. in 1991 as Altered States), in which he describes the embarrassment of his mother and a friend of hers unexpectedly walking in on him dancing naked to a recording of The Rite of Spring.
Both the single mix and its music video implicitly references the Beatles in various ways: through the mop-top wigs worn by Chris and Neil in the video and through the arrangement's use of backwards percussion, droning tambouras, piccolo trumpet flourishes, and a false ending—all devices famously employed by the Beatles during their "psychedelic" phase circa 1967.
In his 2018 book One Hundred Lyrics and a Poem, Neil revealed a remarkable, quite unexpected inspiration for this song: cartoons by the American cartoonist/author Jules Feiffer that he had seen in the London Observer's Sunday magazine, featuring a dancing woman describing her physical activity and the joy that has provoked it in rather intellectual terms. "I imagined myself as a Feiffer cartoon figure, going crazy with happiness.… a contrast between high emotions and the reserved language used to express them." (Although one such Feiffer cartoon is reproduced in Neil's book, it doesn't necessarily mean that that particular cartoon inspired the song; the intellectual dancing woman, almost invariably dressed in a black leotard, is a recurring character in Feiffer's cartoons, and there are many such examples.)

Mixes/Versions

Officially released

Mixer: Stephen Hauge and Mike "Spike" Drake
- Album version (3:04)
  - Available on Very
Mixer: Beatmasters
- 7" version (aka Single Mix, aka Beatmasters 7" Version) (4:45)
  - Available on PopArt, the Further Listening bonus disc with the Very reissue, and on the Disco 2 "Special Edition" bonus disc
  - There are slight variations at around 2:10 between the PopArt version and the original 7" single
- Beatmasters 7" Version - early fade (4:28)
  - Available on the U.S. edition of PopArt
- Beatmasters Alternative Radio Edit (4:00)
- Extended Nude Mix (7:49)
  - An abbreviated (4:15) version of this mix appears on Disco 2
Mixer: Terence Parker
- Grandballroom Dub (aka Grandballroom Mix) (6:39)
Mixer: DJ Pierre
- Club Mix (7:07)
- Wild Pitch Mix (8:22)
  - An abbreviated (2:59) version of this mix appears on Disco 2
- Wild Dub Pitch (7:45)
- Wild Tribal Beats (3:49)
Mixer: Coconut 1
- Voxigen Mix (6:24)

Official but unreleased

Mixer: Beatmasters
- Beatmasters Radio Edit (?)
- Beatmasters Mix - First Cut (4:39)

List cross-references

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