Pet Shop Boys -- Left to My Own Devices

Indeed, it is Thursday night and so once again, it's time for Reminiscings of Youth!

I've long been a Pet Shop Boys fan ever since I first heard their "Opportunities" in the early 1980s. My first...opportunity...to hear Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe was on the car radio because that particular song was regularly getting on "The Top 6 at 6" on the old CFTR-AM station. Then, of course, there came their other danceable synthpop confections such as "It's a Sin", "West End Girls" and the cover of "Always on My Mind". Of course, I ended up getting some of the remix versions on vinyl as a kid at the local Sam The Record Man.

However, it has been "Left to My Own Devices" which was released as the Pet Shop Boys' November 1988 single that has imprinted itself on my brain as their theme song...personal choice, I know. Along with Che Guevara, Debussy and that Roundhead general, "Left to My Own Devices" simply has this epicness with the regularly amazing PSB beats paired with a pop orchestra which must have been channeling the soundtrack of the greatest spy caper ever made as they played this. In fact, I'm surprised that this has yet to become part of a motion picture and I would say that it belongs with a montage credit sequence on the level of "Mission: Impossible".

Nope, I'm not one who particularly went to a lot of concerts (ironic for a guy with a music blog) but I actually had a charleyhorse of envy when I saw the above performance. Just imagine being among fellow Pet Shop Boys fans when the opening dramatic strings from "Left to My Own Devices" activated. When I first heard this on the radio in the late 1980s, I knew it was a PSB song but it took me a couple of days to track down the title, which I did ravenously and when I finally did get the title, I went "Aw, that's so Pet Shop Boys!". And yet, the lyrics were all about a guy who just wanted to spend some time alone with an imagination the size of Godzilla.

I ended up buying the 1988 album "Introspective" (the album cover looks like a TV test pattern designed by Benetton) on the fact that it contained the extended version of "Left to My Own Devices", a slightly less intense take on the original single but with added French horn and an opera singer to compensate. "Introspective" also has a very special place in my heart because it is the very first CD that I ever bought in my life, and it was one of the few albums that I brought over with me to Japan when I started my job on the JET Programme in the summer of 1989. 

Strangely enough, the single wasn't all that much of a hit in the United States or Canada, only getting into the mid-80s on Billboard and RPM respectively but it did reach No. 4 on the UK charts according to the Wikipedia article about the song.

So, what were the Top 3 singles on Oricon in November 1988?

1. Tsuyoshi Nagabuchi -- Tonbo （とんぼ）

2. Akina Nakamori -- I Missed "The Shock"

3. Yui Asaka -- Melody