"Yesterday, When I Was Mad" is a song by English

synth-pop Synth-pop (short for synthesizer pop; also called techno-pop; ) is a music genre that first became prominent in the late 1970s and features the synthesizer as the dominant musical instrument. It was prefigured in the 1960s and early 1970s b ...

duo

Pet Shop Boys Pet Shop Boys are an English synth-pop duo formed in London in 1981. Consisting of vocalist Neil Tennant and keyboardist Chris Lowe, they have sold more than 100 million records worldwide and were listed as the most successful duo in UK music h ...

, released as the fifth and final single from their fifth studio album, ''

Very Very may refer to: * English's prevailing intensifier Businesses * The Very Group The Very Group Limited is a multi-brand online retailer and financial services provider in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Its head offices are based in the ...

'' (1993), on 29 August 1994 by

Parlophone Parlophone Records Limited (also known as Parlophone Records and Parlophone) is a record label founded in Germany in 1896 by the Carl Lindström Company as Parlophon. The British branch of the label was founded on 8 August 1923 as the Parloph ...

. The single, both written and produced by

Neil Tennant Neil Francis Tennant (born 10 July 1954) is an English singer, songwriter and music journalist, and co-founder of the synth-pop duo the Pet Shop Boys, which he formed with Chris Lowe in 1981. He was a journalist for '' Smash Hits'', and assist ...

and Chris Lowe, peaked at number 13 on the UK Singles Chart and number four on the US ''

Billboard A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertis ...

Hot Dance Club Play The Dance Club Songs (also known as National Disco Action, Hot Dance/Disco Club Play, and Hot Dance Club Play) was a chart published weekly between 1976 and 2020 by ''Billboard'' magazine. It used club disc jockeys set lists to determine the mos ...

chart. The song was remixed by Jam & Spoon for its single release, among other things removing a compression effect applied to Tennant's voice during the verses. Its music video was directed by Howard Greenhalgh, depicting a straitjacket-clad Tennant trapped in a surreal psychiatric hospital.

Composition

The song is about the stresses of touring and how being away from loved ones can make musicians unwilling to trust others or carry on with their career, contrasting it with the humour of ironic, pretentious, or rude things people say to touring musicians. Tennant has said that many of the lines in the song, such as "And someone said, 'It's fabulous you're still around today—you've both made such a little go a very long way!'", actually happened. Speaking to ''

NME ''New Musical Express'' (''NME'') is a British music, film, gaming and culture website, bimonthly magazine, and brand. Founded as a newspaper in 1952, with the publication being referred to as a "Rock music, rock inkie", the ''NME'' would be ...

'' in 1993, Tennant commented that the song was "basically about the strange things that happened to us when we were on the last tour", in reference to the 1991 Performance Tour, which is chronicled in ''Pet Shop Boys versus America'' by Chris Heath.

Critical reception

Dave Jennings of ''

Melody Maker ''Melody Maker'' was a British weekly music magazine, one of the world's earliest music weeklies; according to its publisher, IPC Media, the earliest. In January 2001, it was merged into "long-standing rival" (and IPC Media sister publicatio ...

'' named "Yesterday, When I Was Mad" as one of the magazine's "singles of the week", calling it a "magnificent piece of bitchery" with "glorious lyrics". He remarked, "Pet Shop Boys aren't exactly the first band you'd expect to write a brilliant

rock 'n' roll Rock and roll (often written as rock & roll, rock-n-roll, and rock 'n' roll) is a Genre (music), genre of popular music that evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s. It Origins of rock and roll, originated from African ...

on-the-road song; but that's just what they've done here, skewering the sycophants and patronising slimeballs hanging around their tour with malicious delight." Alan Jones from ''

Music Week ''Music Week'' is a trade publication for the UK record industry distributed via a website and a monthly print magazine. It is published by Future. History Founded in 1959 as ''Record Retailer'', it relaunched on 18 March 1972 as ''Music We ...

'' gave the song a score of three out of five, calling it "a bright tongue-in-cheek romp, but its galloping

disco Disco is a music genre, genre of dance music and a subculture that emerged in the late 1960s from the United States' urban nightclub, nightlife, particularly in African Americans, African-American, Italian-Americans, Italian-American, LGBTQ ...

style makes few concessions to melody." David Quantick from ''

'' said, "My theory is that they are now entering a period of being completely barking mad. This single bears it out, with its

Noël Coward Sir Noël Peirce Coward (16 December 189926 March 1973) was an English playwright, composer, director, actor, and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what ''Time (magazine), Time'' called "a sense of personal style, a combination of c ...

cover and its Broadway hell version of '

Can You Forgive Her? ''Can You Forgive Her?'' is a novel by Anthony Trollope, first published in serial form in 1864 and 1865. It is the first of six novels in the Palliser novels, Palliser series, also known as the Parliamentary Novels. The novel follows three pa ...

'." Brad Beatnik from the ''

Record Mirror ''Record Mirror'' was a British weekly music newspaper published between 1954 and 1991, aimed at pop fans and record collectors. Launched two years after ''New Musical Express'', it never attained the circulation of its rival. The first UK Album ...

'' Dance Update noted, "This duo seem to be getting more excited about dance mixes with each single they put out. This one, another idiosyncratic and charming pop song, has about eight mixes." Another ''Record Mirror'' editor,

James Hamilton James Hamilton may refer to: Dukes *James Hamilton, 1st Duke of Hamilton (1606–1649), heir to the throne of Scotland *James Hamilton, 4th Duke of Hamilton (1658–1712), Scottish nobleman *James Hamilton, 5th Duke of Hamilton (1703–1743), Sco ...

, named it a "

hi-NRG Hi-NRG (pronounced "high energy") is a genre of uptempo disco or electronic dance music (EDM) that originated during the late 1970s and early 1980s. As a music genre, typified by its fast tempo, staccato hi-hat rhythms (and the four-on-the-flo ...

galloper" in his weekly dance column.

Stuart Maconie Stuart John Maconie (born 13 August 1961) is an English radio DJ and television presenter, writer, journalist, and critic working in the field of pop music and popular culture. He is a presenter on BBC Radio 6 Music where, alongside Mark Radc ...

from '' Select'' wrote, "Their flair for a catty joke is generously displayed on 'Yesterday When I Was Mad', where the duo are dissected by a media harpy while mad

acid house Acid house (also simply known as just " acid") is a subgenre of house music developed around the mid-1980s by DJs from Chicago. The style is defined primarily by the squelching sounds and basslines of the Roland TB-303 electronic bass synt ...

whips the drama along." Jonathan Bernstein from '' Spin'' viewed it as "a wry litany of faint praise with which the pair have been damned". Sylvia Patterson from ''

Smash Hits ''Smash Hits'' was a British music magazine aimed at young adults, originally published by EMAP. It ran from 1978 to 2006, and, after initially appearing monthly, was issued fortnightly during most of that time. The name survived as a brand ...

'' gave it a full score of five out of five and named it Best New Single, writing, "All of this we expect, but this one's their campest

techno Techno is a genre of electronic dance music (EDM) which is generally produced for use in a continuous DJ set, with tempos being in the range from 120 to 150 beats per minute (bpm). The central rhythm is typically in common time ( ) and often ...

-fevered thunder-stomp with 100% whistleability for ages."

Music video

A music video was produced to promote the single. It was directed by British director of music videos and advertising Howard Greenhalgh, and as with his previous videos for the ''Very'' campaign, makes prominent use of

computer graphics Computer graphics deals with generating images and art with the aid of computers. Computer graphics is a core technology in digital photography, film, video games, digital art, cell phone and computer displays, and many specialized applications. ...

. The video was filmed on 21 July 1994 at

Westminster Hospital Westminster Hospital was a hospital in London, England, founded in 1719. In 1834 a medical school attached to the hospital was formally founded. In 1939 a newly built hospital and medical school opened in Horseferry Road, Westminster. In 1994 the ...

, which was closed at the time, and West Middlesex Hospital, which was in use. Taking the song's theme of "madness" to mean insanity rather than anger, it features a straitjacket-clad Tennant trapped in a surreal psychiatric hospital, all the while being taunted by a tuxedo-wearing version of himself, who represents the critic in the song's lyrics. Lowe's head appears as a hanging lamp; his image was scanned by computer to generate the effect. Saturated colours were added in to give the video a nightmarish, unsettling quality.

B-sides

B-side The A-side and B-side are the two sides of phonograph record, vinyl records and Compact cassette, cassettes, and the terms have often been printed on the labels of two-sided music recordings. The A-side of a Single (music), single usually ...

s include a cover of the

song "

If Love Were All "If Love Were All" is a song by Noël Coward, published in 1929 and written for the operetta '' Bitter Sweet''. The song is considered autobiographical, and has been described as "self-deprecating" as well as "one of the loneliest pop songs ever ...

", arranged by

Richard Niles Richard Niles is an American composer, arranger, record producer, guitarist, broadcaster, and journalist. Biography Early years Niles was born May 28, 1951, in Hollywood. He is the son of Tony Romano, a composer, singer, and guitarist who writ ...

and featuring a trumpet solo by Gerard Presencer, and two new songs, "Some Speculation" and "Euroboy".

"Euroboy"

"Euroboy" is a dance track written by Tennant and Lowe in the

Eurodance Eurodance (sometimes referred to as Euro-NRG) is a genre of electronic dance music that originated in the late 1980s in Europe. It combines many elements of Hip-hop, rap, techno and Eurodisco. This genre of music is heavily influenced by the use ...

mould of such bands as Cappella and Livin' Joy. The track includes Lowe in one of his rare lead-vocals performances, singing through a

vocoder A vocoder (, a portmanteau of ''vo''ice and en''coder'') is a category of speech coding that analyzes and synthesizes the human voice signal for audio data compression, multiplexing, voice encryption or voice transformation. The vocoder wa ...

. He claimed to have been unaware at the time of release that ''Euroboy'' was also the name of a softcore gay

pornographic magazine Pornographic magazines or erotic magazines, sometimes known as adult magazines or sex magazines, are magazines that contain content of an explicitly sexual nature. Publications of this kind may contain images of attractive naked subjects, as is ...

. "Euroboy" later appeared on the US release of the album '' Disco 2'', the B-side collection ''

Alternative Alternative or alternate may refer to: Arts, entertainment and media * Alternative (Kamen Rider), Alternative (''Kamen Rider''), a character in the Japanese TV series ''Kamen Rider Ryuki'' * Alternative comics, or independent comics are an altern ...

'', and the 2001 two-disc re-release, '' Very: Further Listening 1992–1994''. It was occasionally performed live on the Asian leg of the band's 1994 ''Discovery'' tour.

Track listings

* UK CD1 # "Yesterday, When I Was Mad" – 3:59 # "

" – 2:58 # "

" (swing version) – 4:53 # "Yesterday, When I Was Mad" ( Jam & Spoon mix) – 9:20 * UK CD2 # "Yesterday, When I Was Mad" (Coconut 1 remix) – 4:05 # "Some Speculation" – 6:33 # "Yesterday, When I Was Mad" ( Junior Vasquez Factory dub) – 8:19 # "Yesterday, When I Was Mad" (RAF Zone dub) – 5:37 * UK 12-inch single :A1. "Yesterday, When I Was Mad" (Jam & Spoon mix) – 9:20 :B1. "Yesterday, When I Was Mad" (Junior Vasquez Factory dub) – 9:17 :B2. "Yesterday, When I Was Mad" (RAF Zone dub) – 6:20 * UK cassette single and European CD single # "Yesterday, When I Was Mad" – 3:59 # " Euroboy" – 4:28 * US maxi-CD single # "Yesterday, When I Was Mad" (Jam & Spoon mix) # "Yesterday, When I Was Mad" (Coconut 1 12-inch mix) # "Yesterday, When I Was Mad" (Raf Zone mix) # "Yesterday, When I Was Mad" (Junior Vasquez Fabulous dub) # "Euroboy" # "Some Speculation" * US 2×12-inch single :A1. "Yesterday, When I Was Mad" (Jam & Spoon mix) – 9:20 :B1. "Yesterday, When I Was Mad" (Junior Vasquez Factory dub) – 9:17 :B2. "Yesterday, When I Was Mad" (Junior Vasquez Body dub) – 3:58 :C1. "Yesterday, When I Was Mad" (Junior Vasquez Fabulous dub) – 8:19 :C2. "Yesterday, When I Was Mad" (RAF Zone mix) – 6:39 :D1. "Yesterday, When I Was Mad" (Coconut 1 12-inch mix) – 8:22 :D2. "Euroboy" – 4:28 * Australian CD single # "Yesterday, When I Was Mad" # "If Love Were All" – 2:58 # "Can You Forgive Her?" (swing version) – 4:53 # "Yesterday, When I Was Mad" (Jam & Spoon mix) – 9:20 # " Absolutely Fabulous" * Australian cassette single # "Yesterday, When I Was Mad" – 3:59 # "Euroboy" – 4:28 # "Absolutely Fabulous"

Charts

External links

Lyrics: Yesterday, When I Was Mad

References

{{Authority control 1993 songs 1994 singles Music videos directed by Howard Greenhalgh Parlophone singles Pet Shop Boys songs Songs about the media Songs written by Chris Lowe Songs written by Neil Tennant