King's Cross (song)

"King's Cross"
Song by Pet Shop Boys
from the album Actually
Released	1987
Recorded	1987
Studio	Advision Studios (London)
Genre	Synth-pop
Length	5:10
Label	Parlophone Records EMI Records
Songwriter(s)	Neil Tennant Chris Lowe
Producer(s)	Stephen Hague

"King's Cross" is a Pet Shop Boys song, written by Chris Lowe and Neil Tennant ^[1] for their second studio album, Actually (1987). The title refers to the London railway station and the surrounding area that share the name King's Cross. Neil Tennant has said that "King's Cross" is about the victims of Thatcherism and the way society was changing and leaving people out. ^[2] He considers it to be one of the best Pet Shop Boys songs. ^[3]

In 2007, it was recorded and released as a single by Tracey Thorn.

Background and composition

King's Cross is the destination for trains coming to London from North East England and Scotland. Tennant described it as "the station you come to when you come down to London looking for opportunity from the North-East, then the most depressed part of England". ^[4] At the time the song was written in 1986, ^[5] during Margaret Thatcher's second term as Prime Minister, over three million people in the UK were unemployed, with northern England and Scotland among the hardest-hit regions. ^[6] King's Cross was a run-down area with a notorious reputation, frequented by drug addicts and sex workers; it was also home to artists, musicians, activists, and members of the gay community, as well as nightlife venues like the Bell and Scala. ^{[7] [8] [9]}

Chris Lowe lived in King's Cross at the time. ^[10] Tennant came up with the idea for the song while passing the station on the way to Lowe's flat. Another friend in the car said, "Someone told me Monday, someone told me Saturday", about an unspecified matter. Tennant used the phrase in the lyrics, coupled with the line "wait until tomorrow and there's still no way", to mean being pushed around, waiting for an opportunity that doesn't come; he called it "a metaphor for Britain". ^[4] The opening line, "The man at the back of the queue was sent to feel the smack of firm government", interprets a saying associated with Thatcher in a literal way, to mean the weakest person gets hit. ^{[4] [11]}

Tennant wrote the first version of the song on guitar at a slower tempo than the final version. Producer Stephen Hague suggested adding a key change, and he recorded the sounds of trains approaching the station, ^[4] which were used to close out the album. ^[10]

King's Cross fire

Two months after the release of Actually, 31 people were killed in the King's Cross fire. The line "dead and wounded on either side, you know it's only a matter of time" could be seen as prophetic of the disaster. ^[12] In reality, Tennant stated that the line is a reference to AIDS, which was claiming many lives at that time. The Sun newspaper campaigned for "King's Cross" to be released as a charity single, but the song remained an album-only track. ^[4]

The song featured in the 1988 film It Couldn't Happen Here in a scene where a man heads out to work engulfed in flames. ^[13] Director Jack Bond was going to delete the scene but it remained after he consulted with families of some of the victims. ^[4]

Video

For the Pet Shop Boys' first tour in 1989, filmmaker Derek Jarman created video projections to be shown during the performance of different songs, including "King's Cross". Some of the footage came from the 1987 music video for "Rent", featuring Chris Lowe disembarking from a train at King's Cross. Jarman returned to the station in 1989, after the fire, to shoot more film, using Super 8 blown up to 70mm. In a talk on Derek Jarman at UCL Urban Lab, Ben Campkin described the projection for "King's Cross":

The haunting black and white footage of King's Cross produced in '87 and '89 by Jarman and his collaborators echoes the elegiac atmosphere of the Pet Shop Boys' song, and the sense of suspension and disorientation. We follow the unpredictable handheld camera as it judders and sways from the iconic mid-nineteenth-century gasworks, enclosed by a barbed-wire fence, through a street filled with market stalls and litter, into the crowded underground foyer, ending on a train leaving London. Different scenes are superimposed, distorting time and space through montage. The screen is bleached white, then dark and obscure. Traces leak from one scene to the next as one vignette folds into another. 1987 and 1989 collapse into one. ^[9]

The tour films were made available in 1993 on the video compilation Projections. ^[14]

Live performances

In addition to the 1989 tour, "King's Cross" was performed on the 1994 Discovery Tour, released on CD and DVD as Discovery: Live in Rio 1994 , ^[15] and on the 2009–2010 Pandemonium Tour, also released on CD and DVD. ^{[16] [17]}

Cover versions

Tracey Thorn version

"King's Cross"
Single by Tracey Thorn
from the album Out of the Woods
Released	December 2007 (Worldwide)
Genre	Pop/Dance
Label	Virgin Records
Songwriter(s)	Neil Tennant, Chris Lowe
Tracey Thorn singles chronology
"Grand Canyon" (2007) "King's Cross" (2007)

On 9 December 2007, Tracey Thorn released "King's Cross" as the final single from her Out of the Woods album. The single version was remixed by Hot Chip.

Her version of "King's Cross" had first appeared as an iTunes exclusive bonus track to Thorn's album Out of the Woods. This stripped back version had been recorded for inclusion on the main album, but at the time Thorn said in a blog post on Myspace there was not enough room to include it, so it remained a bonus for digital versions of the album only. ^[18]

Neil Tennant from Pet Shop Boys was also thanked in the sleeve-notes to Out of the Woods as he gave her motivation to record and release a new solo album twenty-five years after her first solo album.

Track listing

Digital download

1. "King's Cross" (Hot Chip remix) – 6:49

External links

Lyrics: King's Cross

References

1. "Ascap entry for song".
2. Shears, Jake (3 December 2024). "How Pet Shop Boys wrote 'It's A Sin' - Neil Tennant". Queer the Music (Podcast). Mercury. Event occurs at 23:50. Retrieved 5 January 2025.
3. Shears 2024, 21:50.
4. Heath, Chris (2018). Actually: Further Listening 1987–1988 (booklet). Pet Shop Boys. Parlophone Records. pp. 20–21. 0190295826222.
5. Tennant, Neil (2018). One Hundred Lyrics and a Poem: 1979–2016. London: Faber & Faber. p. 106. ISBN   9780571348916.
6. "The Thatcher Years in Statistics". BBC News. BBC. 9 April 2013. Retrieved 12 January 2025.
7. Furseth, Jessica (May 2019). "Raves and Resistance: The Hidden History of King's Cross". JessicaFurseth.com. Huck Magazine. Retrieved 13 January 2025.
8. Gilbey, Ryan (14 September 2021). "Mona Lisa: Underground Errand". Criterion. Retrieved 13 January 2025.
9. Campkin, Ben (2 March 2014). "Derek Jarman's King's Cross". 3:AM Magazine. Retrieved 13 January 2025.
10. Hibbert, Tom (9–22 September 1987). "And a Rather Good LP It Is, Too!" (PDF). Smash Hits. Vol. 9, no. 17. p. 47. Retrieved 10 January 2025.
11. Hall, Peter A. (2 October 1988). "The Smack of Firm Goverment". The New York Times. Retrieved 13 January 2025.
12. Studer, Wayne. "King's Cross". Pet Shop Boys Commentary. Retrieved 28 October 2021.
13. "Pet Shop Boys - King's Cross [HD, Stereo, "It Couldn't Happen Here" remastered movie Clip]" – via www.youtube.com.
14. "Projections". petshopboys.co.uk. 1 December 1993. Retrieved 13 January 2025.
15. "Pet Shop Boys Announce Discovery: Live In Rio 1994 Available April 30". Rhino. 30 April 2021. Retrieved 13 January 2025.
16. Diver, Mike (2010). "Pet Shop Boys Pandemonium Review". BBC. Retrieved 13 January 2025.
17. "Pet Shop Boys, O2 Arena, London" . Financial Times. London. 21 June 2009. Retrieved 13 January 2025.
18. "Tracey Thorn MySpace.com (archived from original)". MySpace.com. Archived from the original on 2008-07-26. Retrieved 3 November 2022.