If You Like Pet Shop Boys’ “The Pop Kids,” Check Out Bizarre Inc.’s “Playing With Knives”
Today brought a flood of post-Grammys dissection, of course, and — added bonus! — the new single from Pet Shop Boys, “The Pop Kids,” off the longstanding pop legends’ forthcoming album Super (out April 1). “Remember those days, the early ’90s? We both applied for places at the same university,” Neil Tennant sings atop a jiggly, throbbing bassline and housey synths at the onset of the very Pet Shop Boys track. And in an effort to give the song an air of aural authenticity, “The Pop Kids” even comes off like a bit of an homage to Bizarre Inc.‘s 1991 rave anthem “Playing With Knives.”
British dance trio Bizarre Inc. landed a major global hit in the fall of 1992 with the Angie Brown-featuring club classic “I’m Gonna Get You,” a song that eventually placed in the Top 5 on the UK singles chart and topped the US dance chart. But before that one gave strobe lights around the world a reason for flashing, it was the much harder-edged cut “Playing With Knives” that first captured the attention of music buyers and rave-goers in Bizarre Inc.’s home country.
“The Pop Kids” is “about a friend of mine who moved from Birmingham to go to Kings College in London to study History and he made friends with a girl there,” Tennant said in an interview posted on the Pet Shop Boys’ official site. “They both loved pop music and they used to go clubbing all the time and because of that they were known as the pop kids.”
“Playing With Knives” certainly would have been one of the crossover “pop hits” of the time that “The Pop Kids” references — not to mention it wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine Neil and Chris having a fondness for the song back in ’91, circa their own Behaviour/Discography era.
Step back in time by giving both tracks a listen above.
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