Pretty in Pink
The Psychedelic Furs
Pretty in Pink is meaner than its afterlife as a teen-movie title suggests, and the original 1981 recording is where the cruelty lives. The guitars are scrubbed and trebly, a saxophone wanders in sounding half-drunk, and the rhythm section drives with a punk stiffness the later re-recording smoothed into gloss. Richard Butler sings through that ruined-velvet rasp of his, a voice like Bowie gargling gravel, delivering the lines with a sneer that could be contempt or could be pity and never resolves into either. The lyric is a portrait of Caroline — a girl the boys pass around and talk about, who wears her humiliation as style, who is described as pretty in pink precisely because pink is what she has left. It is a song about being consumed socially and calling it confidence. Coming out of London post-punk's colder edge, the Furs specialized in this kind of glamorous disgust, and Talk Talk Talk is full of it. John Hughes hearing an anthem in this is one of pop culture's great productive misreadings. Play it loud enough that the saxophone gets ugly, ideally when you are irritated by a scene you have to attend anyway.
medium
1980s
raw, ragged
UK
Post-punk, New wave. Post-punk with saxophone. sneering, cruel. Stays fixed in a cold, ambivalent sneer that never resolves into contempt or pity. energy 6. medium. danceability 5. valence 4. vocals: ruined-velvet rasp, sneering, ambiguous. production: trebly scrubbed guitars, wandering saxophone, punk-stiff rhythm section. texture: raw, ragged. acousticness 2. era: 1980s. UK. Irritated, on the way to a scene you have to attend anyway.