We attended the Unity Tour at Chase Center in San Francisco last night. I've lost count of how many Pet Shop Boys shows I've been to; suffice to say this may be the fourth decade in which I've seen them live. (The Nightlife tour was my first; my memory is fuzzy on whether that was 1999 or 2000, but either way, I'm considering it to be a 1990's show.)
First things first: PSB put on a fantastic show. If anything, their visual and sonic presentation only gets better with age.
Second things second: This was easily the largest venue I'd ever seen them in, and the sound mixing did not disappoint. (I'm looking at you, Chromatica Ball.)
This is a post about the setlist.
Being part of a co-headlining tour, the list was more constrained for time than it would be if it were a PSB-only show. They were limited to 90 minutes, which kept the song count at 19. Having such a vast and rich catalog, choosing those 19 songs was doubtless a difficult task. At our show, the songs in the order performed were:
- Suburbia
- Can You Forgive Her?
- Opportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money)
- Where the Streets Have No Name (I Can't Take My Eyes Off You)
- Rent
- I Don't Know What You Want but I Can't Give It Any More
- So Hard
- Left to My Own Devices
- Domino Dancing
- Love Comes Quickly
- Losing My Mind
- Always on My Mind
- Dreamland
- Heart
- It's Alright
- Vocal
- It's a Sin
- West End Girls
- Being Boring
As a longtime fan of the Pet Shop Boys, I must admit to being a bit baffled at the set of chosen songs. With only one recent title (Dreamland), one could label this a greatest-hits setlist. (This would make sense, as PSB completed a greatest-hits tour of Europe earlier this year.) And yet, some songs stand out like sore thumbs in that context: Love Comes Quickly and Losing My Mind, in particular. (This may also be my American experience showing through.) It's not that these songs are bad; it's that I don't see them as especially popular among PSB's catalog. And Losing My Mind is a b-side!
So, what's a list-obsessed PSB superfan to do? Why, come up with my own setlist, of course! I imagined myself in charge of determining the setlist: what do I consider essentials? What other singles do I include? How about album or b-side deep cuts? How many cover versions? Do I dare imagine they'd play the cover of Let The Music Play they produced that was included on the soundtrack to The Crying Game?
First up: song categories
Any concert setlist by an established artist is going to require a mix of songs that satisfies the audience: the big hits, the signature songs, songs that fit the venue, and maybe some new stuff. Considering the context (quasi-nostalgia tour, which means quasi-greatest hits) and the venue (large capacity, expect a mix of casual and longtime fans), I defined the following buckets:
- Essentials
- Single Highlights
- Recent-ish
- Album Highlights
- B-sides
- Covers
And because this is my dream setlist, I added another category: Personal Picks. I also created a category for songs I wanted to purposefully exclude from the setlist; these are songs that would likely made it into any setlist (and have), but which I decided to exclude simply as a matter of personal preference. Suffice to say, if you see a song surprisingly missing from the lists that follow, it's probably on the exclusions list.
With those categories defined, it's time to fill up each bucket with my dream setlist. Then, I'll need to whittle that down to one that could reasonably serve as the setlist for another go-round of the Unity Tour. Here goes!
Round 1: No Restrictions
Each category's songs, in alphabetical order:
Essentials
- Being Boring
- Can You Forgive Her?
- Heart
- It's a Sin
- Opportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money)
- West End Girls
- What Have I Done to Deserve This?
Single Highlights
- Home and Dry
- I Don't Know What You Want But I Can't Give It Anymore
- I'm With Stupid
- Integral
- Jealousy
- Liberation
- Love, etc.
- More Than a Dream
- The Pop Kids
- Red Letter Day
- Rent
- So Hard
- Suburbia
- Vocal
Recent-ish
Heavy on the -ish, since these go back as far as 2019.
- Monkey Business
- On Social Media
Album Tracks
- Discoteca
- For Your Own Good
- How Can You Expect to Be Taken Seriously?
- My October Symphony
- The Night I Fell In Love
- Pandemonium
- The Sodom and Gomorrah Show
B-sides
- Friendly Fire
- I Get Excited (You Get Excited Too)
- Shameless
- We All Feel Better In the Dark
Covers
- Always On My Mind (arguably, this is also essential)
- Go West
- The Last to Die
- Where the Streets Have No Name / I Can't Take My Eyes Off You
Personal Picks
These are personal favorites, and are unlikely to be included on any setlist that I don't create.
- It Always Comes as a Surprise
- Love is a Bourgeois Construct
- Paninaro 95
- This Must Be the Place I Waited Years to Leave
- The Truck Driver and His Mate
- The View From Your Balcony
Total: 44 songs
Truly an excellent collection, but obviously too much to fit into a 90-minute set. So, how do we narrow it down? Let's lay out some rules first:
- The setlist must fit into 90 minutes, so it should be limited to 20 songs.
- It must include at least one current or recent-ish title.
- It may exclude at most one song from the Essentials category.
- It must include at least one cover version.
Round 2: the first cut
In this round, we'll reduce the number of ballads, remove songs that may just not work in a large venue, and eliminate songs that are, for lack of a better term, "sonic duplicates." By this, I mean songs that sound more than a little similar to each other.
With that in mind, our first round of cuts, in alphabetical order:
- Friendly Fire
- Jealousy
- Monkey Business
- Shameless
- The View From Your Balcony
- Vocal
- We All Feel Better In the Dark
Ok, down to 37 songs. Still a long way to go...
Round 3: when small differences matter
This is when the cutting gets tough. The choices are more nuanced, including the removal of dated topical references, reducing overrepresentation of a particular album, and deciding which other tracks are just that much more deserving. The resulting cuts:
- Discoteca
- I'm With Stupid
- Integral
- It Always Comes as a Surprise
- The Last to Die
- More Than a Dream
- My October Symphony
- Paninaro 95
- Red Letter Day
- The Truck Driver and His Mate
Ouch, there go some great songs! But, we're not done. We're still at 27 songs, which means we have some hard choices to make now...
Round 4: Killing my darlings
Oh man, this is where I bristle at the 90-minute time limit. As a fan, I long to hear some of these songs live for the first time. Others, I've heard them live before and know they sound great. But, rules are rules. So here goes...
- For Your Own Good
- Home and Dry
- How Can You Expect to Be Taken Seriously?
- I Get Excited (You Get Excited Too)
- Liberation
- The Night I Fell In Love
- Where the Streets Have No Name / I Can't Take My Eyes Off You
The Final Setlist
This leaves us with the following 20 songs, in alphabetical order:
- Always On My Mind
- Being Boring
- Can You Forgive Her?
- Go West
- Heart
- I Don't Know What You Want But I Can't Give It Anymore
- It's a Sin
- Love, etc.
- Love is a Bourgeois Construct
- On Social Media
- Opportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money)
- Pandemonium
- The Pop Kids
- Rent
- So Hard
- The Sodom and Gomorrah Show
- Suburbia
- This Must Be the Place I Waited Years to Leave
- West End Girls
- What Have I Done to Deserve This?
This list meets the requirements laid out up front, without needing to eliminate one of the essential songs. Plus, it includes two songs from my Personal Picks, which makes it that much more lovely to me.
Coming up with this list was a fun and satisfying mental exercise. What would your dream setlist look like?
