The Psychedelic Furs – Pretty in Pink
One of the worst things a music fan can say about a favourite artist is to call them a sellout. It’s such a dirty word: it implies a corruption of intent, a sacrifice of one’s true artistic identity in the pursuit of something crass. We almost never say it about people who are already stars: whatever you may think of the latest Taylor Swift or Drake record, you can’t really sell out when there is already a massive crowd ready to spend money on whatever musical grievance settling you choose to release. I’m not even sure the word was used when folks like Rod Stewart and The Rolling Stones dabbled in disco beats in the late 1970s. No, it is generally reserved for so-called independent or alternative artists who change their sound or image in some way, and then become more commercially successful. Whether there is a connection between the change and the increase in sales seems besides the point.
My friend Shelley thought The Psychedelic Furs sold out when they released their 1987 album “Midnight to Midnight”, saying it was too commercial. I was not much of a Furs fan at the time – my appreciation for them developed later – so I didn’t really hear that big of a change from their previous records. Yes, “Heartbreak Beat” was definitely more upbeat than its predecessor singles, which were in continuous rotation on CFNY, and the record is more cleanly produced and upbeat. But it’s not like Richard Butler changed his singing style, which is one of the things that made the band stand out. And if they were selling out, it had happened the year before, when they re-recorded their 1981 release “Pretty in Pink” for the soundtrack to the movie of the same name.
I loved John Hughes’ movies in the mid-1980s (though not all have aged well, with their sexualizing of teen girls and questionable racial attitudes among the issues), but “Pretty in Pink” (which he wrote but did not direct) did not move me like others had. I guess in part it was because I was ageing out, and didn’t really share the concerns of the main characters, with first loves and prom night micro dramas. Hughes was starting to repeat himself, too, with diminishing returns: Jon Cryer was fantastic as the lovelorn Duckie, but his lip syncing to Otis Redding’s “Try A Little Tenderness” is too much in the vein of Matthew Broderick’s iconic “Twist and Shout” from “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” the year before. (Both are also bits that neither advance the plot nor tell us anything about the two teens we couldn’t figure out on our own, but let’s skip past that part for now.) But the soundtrack? For my money, it’s the best of Hughes’ teen films: The Smiths, Joe Jackson, Suzanne Vega, INXS, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, New Order, Echo & the Bunnymen. I owned it on cassette, and played it and played it over and over for the next several years, and even now I sometimes call it up (minus the New Order track and one other for some reason) on Spotify. It’s just one great tune after another.
The centrepiece – and my favourite – is the Furs with the title track. Unless you listen to the two versions back to back, you might not pick up on the difference. What they mainly did for the movie version is clean up the song, like wiping the grime off something so that it shines a bit more brightly. That’s it: less scuzz on the guitars, less muting of the drums, putting the vocals near the end higher in the mix so you can actually hear (sort of) what Butler is mumbling about. The only substantive change comes towards the end, when they tack on about 45 seconds to wind down with a horn section, more Butler mumbling, and a bit more horns. Hardly such a massive corruption of their talent to be labelled a sellout.
Either way, it’s a great tune, though I do favour the cleaned-up version: I like to (sort of) hear what singers are going on about. The meaning of the song is far removed from the film: unlike the chaste Andie of the movie, the Caroline of the song is a girl who, in Butler’s words, “sleeps around a lot and thinks that she’s popular because of it. It makes her feel empowered somehow and popular, and in fact, the people that she’s sleeping with are laughing about her behind her back and talking about her.” And while I am loath to disagree with a creator about his own work, I’ve never felt that was true. Caroline just seems to be looking for someone to love her, and is unfortunately aiming that desire at a lot of undeserving people. But take away the sex, and the experiences of Caroline and Andie – being treated poorly just for being true to who they are – aren’t all that different, and you can see how the song could have been a beacon for Hughes. I always feel sad for Caroline, and am hopeful that she found a way to move past the douchebags in her life and find love with someone who appreciated her. Unlike poor Duckie, who is matched with future vampire slayer and Trump supporter Kristy Swanson in the film’s closing moments while his true love Andie goes off with the boring “major appliance” that is Blane. It’s a bittersweet ending, but it was the one that test audiences demanded. Now, that’s a sellout.
PopNotes 