England's Dreaming

According to surveys one of the most common dreams that English people have is the Queen coming over to their house for tea while they're in the rather mortifying position of being naked. What Dr. Freud would tell you is this shows that an English person's greatest anxiety isn't death or nuclear war but being embarrassed socially, as if we'd rather die than commit a social faux pas. Wrap this peculiar neurosis up in a bundle with the Queen and a nice cup of tea and you have a pretty clear picture of the English national subconscious. No wonder Morrissey writes the songs he does.

Like the great Moz, Pet Shop Boys are masters at mining Englishness in all it's eccentric moods to make brilliant pop art. For "Dreaming of The Queen" they took this amusing little tidbit about having naked tea with the Queen and turned it into something quite beautiful. This is an elegant, haunting song about the death of love, not just from the perspective of the Queen and Lady Diana (she was still alive at the time) but it also becomes a personal and very moving song about losing a lover to AIDS.

I can't say I've ever had that dream myself, mine usually involve scoring the winning goal for England in a World Cup Final while simultaneously snogging Elizabeth Hurley.

Download: Dreaming of The Queen - Pet Shop Boys (mp3)
Buy: "Very" (album)