Flashback Friday - The Speed Of Love

Part III of the Pet Shop Boys' singles discography today. Love Comes Quickly was the third single from their debut album Please, and the last one that came out before the actual album release in 1986. After the success of West End Girls and Opportunities, Love Comes Quickly's chart success was rather disappointing; the highest spot it reached was No. 19 in the UK charts. This also led to reviews going from "they'll have to write better songs if they want to lose the one-hit wonder tag" to "if this is the best they can do fame is going to go as quickly as love comes". We now know that things turned out different...

The song is about the inevitability of falling in love, even for those who deliberately shun the idea (hence the line "Sooner or later, this happens to everyone"). It was written in 1984 in a studio in Camden when Neil and Chris were in an "Italian Disco" mood, and the boys later played it to the head of A&R at EMI, Dave Ambrose. They were signed to the company after that, but Neil still thinks that it was not because of Love Comes Quickly, but rather of Beautiful Beast, another demo they had on the same tape.

Producer Stephen Hague is credited for songwriting on this track, based on the fact that he actually added the middle bit and wrote two lines for it. For the saxophone part at the end, the boys recruited Andy Mackay from Roxy Music.

As with West End Girls and Opportunities before, Shep Pettibone did some remixes for Love Comes Quickly. A new remix by Blank & Jones was produced in 2003 for the promotion of singles-collection PopArt.

The sleeve cover for Love Comes Quickly, showing Chris Lowe in a BOY-baseball cap, became something of a Pet Shop Boys icon. And it probably gave that fashion label quite a boost! Neil Tennant later stated that he had expected this image to be the group's coming out moment, because to him it looked "incredibly gay".

The music video was once again directed by Eric Watson, and was kept very simple, showing mostly only facial shots of Tennant singing. Watson himself later called it a "complete disaster"... decide for yourself by re-watching the vid down below.

In the same year after the release of Love Comes Quickly, Japanese pop singer Hidemi Ishikawa did a cover version of the song in Japanese (would love to hear that!!!), and in 2004, a band called Memphis also covered it for their album I Dreamed We Fell Apart.

Here are some mixes and remixes, a mash-up of Placebo, Kate Bush and the Boys by DJ Magnet, the B-side That's My Impression, followed by the music video for Love Comes Quickly: (thanks again to the BornAgain80s-forum for the help with finding these versions!)

Love Comes Quickly (Dance Mix)
Love Comes Quickly (Shep Pettibone Mastermix)
Love Comes Quickly (Blank & Jones Remix)
Love Comes Running Up That Hill Quickly (Mashup by DJ Magnet)
That's My Impression (7 Inch Version)
That's My Impression (Disco Mix)





next up is Suburbia!