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Hey headmaster!

Posted by diogenes on 2025-May-8 09:05:32, Thursday
I have commented before – albeit an age ago – on the Pet Shop Boys and their songs. Of all pop groups, the PSBs have several songs that, at least to me, seem, well, suggestive.

For example, what about Vampires:
Sun in the kitchen
Boy, you're still sleeping
When you get hungry
I'll do what you want me to do
You're a vampire
I'm a vampire too.
And then there's Discoteca:
I don't speak in anger
though the chances that I've let
pass me by and now regret
I can't forget
They're haunting me
like a score of unpaid debts
Is it enough to live in hope
that one day we'll be free
without this fear?
I'm going out
and carrying on as normal …
The ultimate PSB song for us, though, is Young Offender, which is explicitly a song about an older man falling in love with a boy who's playing a video game:
You may be broke now and you may be bored
Call you delinquent or leave you ignored
You'll get what you want
Drive to distraction and crash on the way
Watch your reaction and wait 'til you say
you'll get what you want
It hurts if you can't. ...

I'll do what you want if you want me enough
I'll put down my book and start falling in love
or isn't that done?
How graceful your movements, how bitter your scorn
I've been a teenager since before you were born
and I'm younger than some
I've only begun …

Will I get in your way
or open your eyes?
Who will give whom
the bigger surprise?

Is that fire in your eyes or the glow of machines?
Watch how your fingers burn over the keys
so sure what you do
I haven't a clue

Young offender
what's your defence?
You're younger than me, obviously
Young offender, how you resent
the lovers you need
It hurts when they bleed
Young offender
why the pretence?
You don't agree, I know, I know …
You wouldn't believe how many times I've heard people talk about the lyrics of the song, and somehow convert the teenage boy into a “young man”. In any case, the whole point of the song is that the love is intergenerational, and it is full of references that emphasise the generation gap. (“I'll put down my book and start falling in love / or isn't that done?” “so sure what you do / I haven't a clue”)

I've noticed that the lyricist, Neil Tennant, frequently has a terribly good and plausible explanation ready in interviews for some of his more suggestive lyrics. He's an intelligent man, and so has obviously thought in advance about what he's going to say.

There are other interesting songs as well, but today I was reading about Hey, Headmaster, which you can listen to here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RD5PxCZwRsc

The lyrics are as follows:
Hey, headmaster, what's the matter with you?
Why you always so serious? Why so blue?
All the kids in the school have seen you
being patient with the boys who fool you
when you used to hit them with your ruler
so independent too
Hey, headmaster, what's the matter with you?

There's a crisis rumoured in the school
The boys have cut their hair short to look cool
Examination time is drawing near
Disintegration of the football team
No one seems to want to play for real
in classroom, club or pool
Hey, headmaster, what you gonna do?

There's an invitation in the post
to a reading party on the coast
Pack your bags up, you old bibliophile
Get together with your friends who will
give you time to think and time to kill
with independent hosts
Hey, headmaster, aren't you gonna go?
Hey, headmaster, aren't you gonna go?
So why isn't the headmaster going to the reading party? In an interview I read today, Neil says:
It's set at a minor public school. … I always think there's been some terrible sex scandal and the headmaster's about to be arrested or something like that, because there's a whole shadow cast. But the song doesn't spell it out, and I don't know. Actually, I think that at the end of the song the headmaster's going to kill himself. I like the fact that it has the word 'bibliophile' in it.
So it seems that it's a song about a headmaster facing imminent arrest because of ...? What? Touching up a few boys? Who knows? But it is a song written from the point of view of the man facing arrest, and is in no way condemnatory. The notion of it ending in the violence of suicide is in odd contrast to the gentle quality of the song itself.


diogenes
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