Pet Shop Boys - Being Boring - Lyrics Meaning

Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys described this 1990 track as, "...one of our best songs." Inspiration came from a Zelda Fitzgerald quote - `She was never bored mainly because she was never boring' - and the death of a close friend. Tennant said in an interview, "The first verse is all my friends in Newcastle, and this friend of mine was one of them. It just described what we and our aspirations were. And then the second verse I moved to London with an idea to go to Polytechnic and it describes the excitement of that. The third verse is looking back at what's happened and I'm doing what I'm doing and he's dead. I mean, it's quite simple."

The underlying message running through the lyrics is one of chasing dreams and moving on but never expecting to lose your friends along the way. Tennant has said the death of his friend influenced the mood of the track and others on the album but this song became, "a kind of an elegy for him."

The repeated lines, `We were always hoping that, looking back, you could always rely on a friend,' really let us in on a story of personal loss.