It Couldn't Happen Here

Why does every song by the Pet Shop Boys have to be about being gay and having AIDS?! This isn't! They admitted themselves that they mainly write songs about heterosexual relationships ! Anyway, this is my second favourite track on the album 'Actually'. I believe it to be a song about realisation but with the hint of hope, the first verse starts with the girl dreaming of high fashion and success, being young and optimistic about the future, then the second verse is about the nasty people you meet in life, a boss in a shitty job perhaps. It's all about crushed dreams and broken promises but the hope is that at the end of the day they still have each other and seem to just laugh it all off with the help of alcohol! At the end of the day we're all just going round and round in circles !

It seems to me Neil is talking about two people (a man and a woman, I suppose) who went to another town for trying to get a better life, but their plans have fallen through and nothing has really happened as they expected it when they came there. And now the male character who talks at 1st person is exposing what happened to him and specially to her confident woman friend ("In six inch heels, quoting magazines"), who has decided to work as a prostitute for paying her bills ("Go all the way, you knew you could" and "Who pays your bills? How come you came this far?"). Therefore, she has lost a considerable part of their self-esteem while she's trying to survive on this not a little glamourous reality, even though she has always found a way for pretending not to see the 'scars' she has got until today ("I don't expect to talk in terms of sense / Our dignity and injured innocence / It contradicts your battle-scars / Still healed, so far").

"We've drunk too much, and woke up everyone" and "We've laughed too loud, and woke up everyone"

Well, their stylish posture was changed by a new life full of drinks and loud laughs... In short, they have lost their initial pose on having to face the difficulties on this new place which is even harder than the one where they came from...

And finally in the line "We've found ourselves back where we started from", he shows the real dimension of their flop there...

I meant "Therefore, she has lost a considerable part of HER self-esteem".

I've realised now that maybe she went to this new place for being a famous model in the ridiculous (that's just my pov)fashion world while he might be trying to get a good role as an actor... And this new place is certainly a big city...

It's about AIDS and the fact they lost so many friends in the gay community through it. The lyrics are pretty clear. Nobody thought it would happen to them.

This song IS about AIDS, a close friend of Neil Tennant contracted AIDS and this song is about that. How they were so carefree when they were younger, how society had heard of this terrible disease 'from Africa' but everyone had said that it would never happen here. Listen to the lyrics again and you will see the true meaning stand out. The friend in this song is also the same friend who's funeral Neil wroth about in 'Your Funny Uncle' by the way