Neil Tennant has said (half-jokingly?) that this dance ballad was the duo’s attempt to mimic Stock Aitken Waterman, the writing team behind the peppy ’80s synth pop of Rick Astley, Kylie Minogue and Bananarama. That striving toward a hi-NRG higher ground, ingeniously paired with big harp flourishes and wah-wah guitar, may lend “Being Boring” some of its magic — creating a buoyant counterpoint (and complement) to its themes of loss, sorrow and memory. Written for a friend of Tennant’s who died of AIDS, the song has a classic three-act structure (’20s-inspired teen parties in northern England, starry-eyed arrival in ’70s London, backward glances at the turn of the ’90s), an air of wistful carpe diem (“I bolted through a closing door”) and a last verse that always catches in the throat: “I never dreamt that I would get to be/ The creature that I always meant to be/ But I thought in spite of dreams/ You’d be sitting somewhere here with me.”
(Browse the All-TIME 100 Songs and more than 100 other pop culture lists on TIME’s Populist iPad app)
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtjFsFXU9YU]
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