Pet Shop Boys -- One of the Crowd

 

It's time for another Reminiscings of Youth session this week and for the second time, we have Pet Shop Boys following one of my very favourites of theirs, "Left to My Own Devices" from 1988. 

As they say, timing is everything, and as it turns out, I had just arrived in Japan on the JET Programme when Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe put out a Japan-only short compilation album commemorating that country's part of their MCMLXXXIX Tour in 1989. Titled "In Depth" and released in July 1989, it contained their hits including "Always On My Mind" and the aforementioned "Left to My Own Devices" but it was Track 2 that got some new attention from me.

"One of the Crowd" is, as would usually be the case for a Pet Shop Boys song, immensely catchy and it was through "In Depth" that I first learned about this earworm by Tennant and Lowe, although I later read that it was a coupling song with the single "It's Alright" that was released the previous month. Still, it has remained the most notable song from "In Depth" for me because of those tribal rhythms, Lowe's vocoder intoning of fishing and my long wondering whether PSB was channeling either YMO or Kraftwerk when they came up with "One of the Crowd".

It's been over 30 years since this one came out but I certainly hope that some enterprising fellow might be able to put up some sort of computer graphics video based on the tune. All this time, I'd assumed that "One of the Crowd" had been placed in "In Depth" as a sorta/kinda comic admonishment against Japanese society's tendency to follow the crowd and fashion trends and so forth. But then, I went to the Pet Shop Boys Wiki where I found out that Tennant had once mentioned that "...Chris said in an interview on TV that he liked following fashion and that he didn't like to stand out, he liked to be one of the crowd" which became part of the lyrics for the song. It ended up that "One of the Crowd" was just Lowe goofing about, with his partner and the rest of the production staff having a belly laugh at the silliness of it all.

Nothing profound or philosophical at all. However, it says something that even when the Boys are taking the piss out of something, it still comes out great. "In Depth" peaked at No. 18 on Oricon. So, what were the Top 3 Oricon singles in that hot and hazy month of July in 1989?

1. Princess Princess -- Sekai de Ichiban Atsui Natsu （世界でいちばん熱い夏）

2. Wink -- Samishii Nettaigyo （淋しい熱帯魚）

3. Yumi Matsutoya -- Anniversary