"Yesterday, When I Was Mad" (1993)

[listen]

The fifth and final single from the big Very Relentless show missed the main US Hot 100 pop chart but did go top 10 in 1994 on the Billboard Hot Dance Club Play chart, which has a lot of words. This track feels like a candidate for the everysong of Very, containing all of the other tracks as it is contained by them in turn. In memory I thought the sequencing put it up sooner than sixth track on the album, but here we are. It's got the patented drollery of the title. It operates as a kind of bridge of Very normalcy between two highlights of the album which are very strange, "Dreaming of the Queen" and "The Theatre." Once this "Yesterday" gets wound up it moves at a nimble and brisk pace ("techno techno techno," as Chris Lowe says in notes from the Further Listening edition), breaking open on the chorus. I find that's usually a good place to start singing if I'm going to. The song is about being pouty and/or out of sorts (specifically, on tour and thus often for good reason). I've always read the singer as a hot-tempered but likable fool who appreciates and counts on his forgiving friends. I like the slow / fast herky-jerk start and the way it mixes up time signatures. Those time signatures are because the Pet Shop Boys were nostalgic for progressive rock, according to Neil Tennant in the notes. "Yesterday, When I Was Mad" feels sequenced deliberately to follow "Dreaming of the Queen," wandering randomly for the first minute as if to allow time for recovery from that barrage perhaps. Then the techno busts out about a minute in and the song comes into its own ("techno techno techno"). Ultimately I've always heard the song as about letting go of anger and putting it behind you, delivered in a vaguely self-mocking way—a sort of mental health exercise, Pet Shop Boys single, and "techno techno techno" all at once in a neat 3:55.