What the Pet Shop Boys’ Secret Service song means now
In light of the still-unresolved investigations into the July 13 assassination attempt on President Trump, a Communist friend emailed to challenge my reading of the Pet Shop Boys song “Bullet for Narcissus.” By his own interpretation, the Obama fan disputed my wishful theory that the song was a defense of the beleaguered British pop star Morrissey: “Pretty sure Trump was on Pets’ mind. Doubt M. signifies much to them at this point.”
We’re at a point where pop music no longer unites us. When I interviewed the Pets in 1986, lead singer-songwriter Neil Tennant effusively praised Morrissey’s songwriting. But now Morrissey faces the ignominy of cancel culture because of certain political comments, which is why I heard “Bullet for Narcissus” as advocacy from a fellow artist. But if it’s not, the Pets have likely succumbed to the mind-virus conformity that has infected so many progressives. If the Pets won’t defend Morrissey, it’s probable that they also disdain Trump and anyone whose life and politics the radical mob rejects.
This would not be the first time the Pets have gone Bolshevik and made unacceptable political challenges. On 2005’s “I’m with Stupid,” about the “special relationship” between President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair, they borrowed a slogan from Iraq war-protester bumper stickers. Propelled by that unmistakable leftist sense of superiority, the Pets had recorded their bitchiest song ever and made it the lead track on the Fundamental album. Putting down a lover, while cowing before the judgment of others, revealed a weakness that sometimes pertains to taking sides politically — possibly resulting in their most irresponsible song ever.
To interpret “Bullet for Narcissus” as an assassination quip relegates the Pets to the same pettiness as Madonna, for her shrill, murderous “I have thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House” speech, which she delivered at the Women’s March the day after Trump’s inauguration in January 2017. Such idiocy negates any possibility that “Bullet” shares the same romantic subtext as “I’m with Stupid.”
Sung from the vantage of a Secret Service protector wearing a bulletproof vest (“I’ve got eyes in the back of my head / For anything suspicious”), “Bullet” stops short of malice. Instead, descriptions of the protectee’s “vanity” suggest the simple-minded, supercilious anger of Trump-haters that outsiders like the Pets might imbibe from our viciously partisan media.
When “Bullet” imagines the risks taken by Secret Service officers, even a socialist songwriter as sophisticated as Tennant gets twisted in his own ironies. Such arrogance typifies adherents of the Marxist “radical imagination” — the Pets’ first hit, “West End Girls,” cited Edmund Wilson’s epic history of socialism, To the Finland Station. Now the Pets seem to romanticize political violence.
Does my Communist friend credit the Pets for devising a Saul Alinsky–style projection of homicidal motives? This viewpoint accepts “Bullet” as a post-Brexit version of “Stupid,” rebuking the alliance between the U.S. and Great Britain, Reagan and Thatcher (favorite targets of ’80s Britpop) while ignoring England’s current sociological turmoil — the subject that makes Morrissey more relevant than the Pets.
Tennant’s suggestion of political violence was not prescient; it parrots the revolutionary’s handbook. But it’s as perplexing as the prevarication and procrastination by federal-agency officials during investigations into the July 13 assassination attempt.
Bereft of compassion, “Bullet” lacks the depth of the most humanizing line in “Stupid”: “I never thought that I would be / A sacrifice for love.”
Instead, the high dudgeon now heard in Tennant’s fey voice gives too much weight to the smugness of group-thinkers. Being of post-military-conscription age, the Pets devalue the sacrifice that patriots and Secret Service officers used to be praised for.
Finally: To consider “Bullet” an anti-Trump protest song rather than a Morrissey defense plea muddles the coherence of the Pets’ Nonetheless album, which reflects on the personal, romantic themes that always gave them substance. The anticipatory assassination blues of “Bullet” feels smug rather than a confession of complex feelings. Tennant might hint at Trump’s allegedly dictatorial intentions but not at Biden’s nation-destroying open-borders executive orders. He misses the “Are you not Mr. Right?” sentiment on “Stupid” that showed the moral largesse of questioning one’s petty presuppositions.
But that was before the psychological condition of Trump Derangement Syndrome reduced many gifted performers to banality. Stepping out of the romantic, sexual lane into blatant politics is risky, and PSB do not succeed on this song, unless one prefers a snide perspective.
Now that the administrative state and the partisan media pretend that the July 13 and September 15 events were insignificant, leftists who want to think the Pets aim “Bullet” at Trump should confess their desire for political vengeance. As conservative columnist Matt Walsh recently observed, “Trump is the most relentlessly demonized politician in U.S. history. That has consequences.”
If the Pets fail to reprove the demonization of Trump and Morrissey — disregarding hateful partisan fashion—their diminished integrity will be one of the consequences.