"The Man Who Has Everything" (1993)

(listen)

"The Man Who Has Everything" is approximately where Very Relentless takes to its slowdown cooldown in the greater arc of the big show, but it bears a good deal of heat the way objects do on hot days even after sunset, glowing like radiation. The largely instrumental track attacks with long pulling notes on strings and an intensely percolating rhythm. Singers begin to emerge, singing at the top of their lungs but pushed way down in the mix in the style of "The Theater." The words are hard to make out, mindless calls to work it more, work it harder, with a pounding hi-NRG vibe: "Come on, come on, come on, come on / How long will you do some more? How long will you do some more? / You got to you got to – Love Love." At about a minute and a half in it steps up to a familiar Pet Shop Boys play, a shift, a rise, dawning of melody. A silvery portion of heaven and host of keyboards do the functional work of chorus, the place where it returns again, and again. Sing laa-la-la-la-laa, get high on it while it's here. Another 30 seconds, another rise, a new layer of rhythm careening into the fray. Now it feels like speed racer zooming around the track, background images a blur the way manga shows motion but with the main subject as if motionless statue, absolute point of focus, inside this bare fraction of a moment. The bits roll in like waves then, dense substantial ephemeral matter crashing. And again—back and forth, up and down, ascending, racing, crashing. Smooth like glass, glossy reflecting surface, rubbery with bass notes, holding to your head like your favorite hat. It never loses intensity even as it scales down. "The Man Who Has Everything" modulates its six minutes one to the next, impossibly beautiful in unexpected moments, churning and stirring and ending on one last "Love."