Who said pop with a disco beat couldn't be smart? At the risk of sounding a tad Newsnight Review, I'm With Stupid, the Pet Shop Boys' first single in far too long, works on so many levels.
Listen to it once and it's a disco ditty in which a boy complains about his intellectually inferior date. On closer examination, the singer is Tony Blair speculating about George Bush: "Call you every day/ Fly across the ocean/ Just to let you get your way/ No one understands me/ Where I'm coming from/ Why would I be with someone/ Who's obviously so dumb?" The homoerotic overtones echo George Michael's infamous 2D-TV video of Bush and the Blairs in bed together: "Have you made a fool of me?/ Are you not Mr Right?"
Hard-hitting and fashionable stuff, but it's not all serious. The video, starring Little Britain's Matt Lucas and David Walliams, features the comedy duo taking on the guises of the Pets in their Go West and Can You Forgive Her? incarnations. Musically it's right up there with the best of the Pets' work and sends a thrill of anticipation across airwaves in advance of parent album Fundamental.
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