It’s a Sin!

For the latest in my album cover tributes series, I’m doffing my cap to Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe, aka Pet Shop Boys; one of the great British pop acts. Their 2nd album ‘Actually’ (1987) is a stone cold classic. All 10 tracks are brilliant, and 4 of them, ‘Rent’, ‘It’s a Sin’, ‘Heart’, and today’s choice, ‘What Have I Done to Deserve This?’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wn9E5i7l-Eg&list=PLMEqJfUN13DwZnhVWaRa0mc8NtvtvQS5G (which also features the late, lamented, Dusty Springfield) were huge hit singles.

The original album cover photograph https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actually was taken by Cindy Palmano, whose photos also grace albums by artists as diverse as Tori Amos, Black Sabbath, XTC and Killing Joke, amongst others. 

I love that the PSBs manage to be witty, political, stylish and danceable all at once. When Neil Tennant wrote about “Che Guevara and Debussy to a disco beat” in their 1988 song ‘Left to My Own Devices” he somehow managed to sum up the spirit of the duo! Of course, his first brush with all things ‘poptastic’ came when he was a journalist/Assistant Editor at ‘Smash Hits’, a magazine whose cultural influence on people of my generation should never be underestimated! https://archive.org/details/smash-hits?&sort=-downloads&page=2 

I hope you’re all as safe and well as you can possibly be in these times of continuing turbulence. 

Here in the Liverpool City Region we’re gearing up for further restrictions coming into place at midnight tonight. The figures show that Covid transmission here is currently 4 times the national average, and that at least 1 in every 100 people has the virus. I know through my work that local hospital admissions for Covid-19 are rising quickly again too. I had been due to travel down to Sussex today to visit my mum for the first time in 9 months for her birthday weekend but, alas, it wasn’t to be. I hope very much that I’ll get to see her before too much longer. Meantime, I’m sending love to her, and to all of you! Xx