"I know you'd much rather be with rock royalty/Instead of someone like me," Pet Shop Boys' Neil Tennant sings on their new Release (Sanctuary). It's an odd thing for someone who's had as many hit records as Tennant to say, suggesting that he's so far from "rock royalty," he's completely outside that world. (And doubly odd given that the Smiths' guitarist Johnny Marr plays on the song in question, "I Get Along.") But that's the game the Boys have been playing for years: they operate in the straight-in-multiple-senses world of the pop mainstream, but they pretend they're not of it. Instead, they like to act as if they were hardcore club rats. Release's bonus disc even includes a semi-cover of Raze's circa 1990 house standard "Break 4 Love."

Pet Shop Boys' suggestion that their pop stardom is just another pose also gives them license to use the weapon nobody begrudges the underdog: sarcasm. Late on Release, there's a song called "The Night I Fell in Love," in which a young man meets up with a famous rapper -- clearly Eminem -- and puts the "stan" in "one-night stand." (The narrator asks his lover about the "homophobia and stuff/He just shrugged.") If, say, Pink tried this, there would be repercussions from Eminem's camp. When MTV asked Dr. Dre about "The Night I Fell in Love," he thought it was "funny as hell." No harm done.

Eminem, of course, attacks prominent pop figures too, and he names names, but he prefers to pick on people his own size. When he disses Moby, as he does on "Without Me," or Everlast, as he did a couple of years ago, it demands retaliation. (Well, Everlast isn't exactly his size. Em's final word on the subject, a never officially released but readily digitally acquired pitcher of venom called "Quitter," pretty much defines "excessive force.") The Boys, on the other hand, know they're not a threat to anyone, so they can say what they want. The secret centerpiece of Release is "The Samurai in Autumn," an oblique but unmistakable commentary about themselves after almost 20 years on a margin they built for themselves. "It's not as easy as it was/Or as difficult as it could be," Tennant purrs.

One of Pet Shop Boys' spare court-jester hats seems to have been picked up by Helen Love, a cheerful Welsh troublemaker whose preferred medium is the three- or four-song single. She's just released her third collection of singles, Radio Hits 3 (Damaged Goods) -- no points for guessing what the first two were called. Love has an acid tongue, a noticeable speech impediment, and some pitch issues, and she's backed by a tinny-sounding guitar and the cheapest synth ever touched by human hands. (The band, à la PJ Harvey, take her name: one of their songs is called "Yeah Yeah We're Helen Love.") It used to be that every song included a Joey Ramone reference. This time, Atari Teenage Riot get mentioned a lot more, but the principle is the same. A couple of years ago, Love's "Girl About Town" almost became a UK hit; on RH3, she celebrates her near-miss by tossing in a muzak version of it and recycling its melody at least twice.

Most of her jokes on the new album are new ones, though, and the punch lines consist of well-aimed namedropping -- e.g., the girl who "looks like Marc Bolan on a bad hair day" and "will dance to anything but St. Etienne." "Long Live the UK Music Scene" is a totally gratuitous and totally hilarious attack on Shed Seven, one of those Britpop bands who get by in the British press on the strength of being British and having a pulse. Love hasn't exactly evolved over the years -- it's not too far from 1993's "Formula One Racing Girls" to the new "Great in Formula One" -- but it's possible to imagine her going on like this indefinitely, since the entire point of her recording career is to watch the parade go by and crack jokes about it.

Of course, everybody's sideline is somebody else's main attraction. The Teen Anthems, whose relative fame makes Helen Love look like Celine Dion, released a single called "Welsh Bands Suck" a few years back. It starts, "Oh no, it can't be true, everybody's saying Welsh bands are cool/Oh no, that can't be right, apart from Helen Love they're a load of shite." Anyone up for a Teen Anthems tribute?

Issue Date: May 24 - 30, 2002