Pet Shop Boys - It's Alright

JUL 01 1989 · 12:00

Pet Shop Boys - It's Alright (1989) Director: Eric Watson Era: Late-80s UK Synth-Pop & House Crossover (1989) - Peak of Pet Shop Boys' Introspective era; a moment when British synth-pop absorbed Chicago house music energy into arena-scale pop anthems, concurrent with the Second Summer of Love and nascent rave culture High. 'It's Alright' (1989) is a rare artefact at the intersection of house music history, British synth-pop, and fine-art music video practice. Directed by Eric Watson, the Pet Shop Boys' defining visual collaborator of the era, with explicit debt to Robert Mapplethorpe's photographic tradition, the video functions as both a pop document and a self-conscious art object. Its limited MTV airplay history makes it an under-studied example of how formal experimentation could resist commercial broadcast norms even within mainstream pop. The 110-infant production scale, the documented Notting Hill location shoot, and the thematic coherence between visual concept (babies/future) and lyrical content make it an unusually integrated and research-rich text. Context: Released 26 June 1989, 'It's Alright' arrived at a pivotal cultural junction: the UK's Second Summer of Love was fading into mainstream absorption, house music was crossing from underground clubs into the pop charts, and the Pet Shop Boys were completing their most sonically ambitious album cycle (Introspective). The song is a cover of a 1987 Chicago house track by Sterling Void and Paris Brightledge, a direct act of cultural bridge-building between American underground dance and British synth-pop production. Its lyrics enumerate late-Cold War geopolitical crises (Afghanistan, South Africa) before resolving into an affirmation of music as a universal, transnational force. The music video's conceptual vocabulary, babies as symbols of futurity, Mapplethorpe-informed monochrome, studio isolation, situates it within a tradition of art-directed British pop video that treated the form as a gallery object rather than a promotional clip. Director notes: Watson directed 'It's Alright' in 1989 for the single release from Introspective. The video was shot in black and white on film in a studio in Notting Hill, London, with lighting consciously inspired by the photography of Robert Mapplethorpe, a technique designed to make subjects glow luminously against a deep black background. The concept was originated by Chris Lowe as a visual reflection of the song's thematic concern with future generations, resulting in 110 babies being present on set during the shoot. Watson's own son, Eugene Watson, appeared in the video seated on Chris Lowe's lap, per the IMDB cast listing. The video was edited by Warren Meneely (per IMVDb). Despite the video's artistic ambition, it received limited MTV rotation due to its unconventional low-key lighting. Watson also shot the single's cover photography.