Long considered to be Pet Shop Boys' "mature" record, Behaviour is in fact a more complex and multi-faceted collection of songs. The music for almost all the songs of the album - including Being Boring - was put together in 1989 in a small studio in west Glasgow that the group had hired, for the simple reason that they'd been to Glasgow on tour and liked it.
While Being Boring only peaked at a comparitively lowly No.20 in the UK after it was released as a single in November 1990, it remains one of the Pet Shop Boys defining moments.
It is closely informed by the AIDS-related death at the age of 34 of Chris Dowell, who had been friends with Neil Tennant from childhood. The three half-sung/half-spoken verses encompass the teenage parties attended by Tennant and Dowell, and Tennant's move to London in the 1970s before, in the final verse, Neil reflects on his current life, while Dowell has died and other friends are ill.
Despite its pensive mood, it is inspired in part by Stock Aitken Waterman: it replicates their oft-used device of moving up a semi-tone into the chorus, and the chord sequence then utilises - of all things - the first part of the chorus to Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up.
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