This video is sponsored by Skillshare. The first 1000 people to follow the link in the description
will receive a free trial of Skillshare Premium. Stick around to the end to learn more.
Between 1993 and 1997, music in Britain was dominated by the reign of Britpop.
Copying the Small Faces and Kinks was back in vogue, everyone had a vested interest in
championing either Blur or Oasis and the charts were infested with acts with names like Shed 7,
Sleeper and Menswear. Emerging amongst this flag-waving rabble were the grungy,
glam-splattered post punks known as Placebo. Fronted by the all-too sexual Brian Molko,
they singularly led a charge against the backward-facing Britpop movement
with rock music that thrilled, shocked and flirted in equal measure. But the most iconic
and sleaziest of their 90s singles challenged gender roles and left a trail of bodily fluids
in its wake. This is New British Canon and This is the Story of “Nancy Boy.”
So are Placebo British? If you’re talking about the individual members of the band, then no.
But Placebo formed in the UK, were based in the UK, and their music was shaped by
life in the UK. I know it's totally a British thing to claim things that aren’t ours,
but people who have emigrated and live in the UK by choice should be allowed under the British
banner if they so wish. And a majority of you do agree. Plus Placebo won Best New
British Band at the Kerrang! Awards in 1997. An International band couldn’t’ve done that.
Placebo formed in London in 1994, but their members weren’t close to native. Singer and
guitarist Brian Molko was born in Belgium to an American father and Scottish mother. Bassist
Stefan Olsdal and drummer Robert Schultzberg were born in Sweden. Having moved to the UK
for higher education, their influences were at odds with the prevailing Britpop movement,
Molko preferring Bowie, PJ Harvey and Sonic Youth to Britpop’s love of The Kinks and Beatles.
“For a start we're not British. We didn't grow up here, so we don't share the same vocabulary.
We never listened to any of the groups that bands like Ocean Colour Scene listened to. With us it
was all post-punk and new wave guitar music along with Patti Smith's poetry,
stuff like Depeche Mode
and darker shit like Joy Division.”
Immediately in a live setting, Placebo turned heads, especially the androgynous Molko and
his high-ranged vocals. With his small frame and long hair, he had always been confused for female,
but on stage Molko was also trying to make a pointed statement by wearing make-up and a dress.
“I wanted to challenge the homophobia that I was witnessing in the music scene. I wanted anybody
who was slightly homophobic to show up at our gigs and think 'Oh, I really fancy the singer.
She's hot!' only to find out later that the singer was called Brian, which would hopefully lead them
to go home and ask themselves a few questions. Of course the cross-dressing was an aesthetic
choice but for us, it was also a political act.” [Brian Molko, The Independent, October 2017]
After recording a scrappy 4-track demo, Placebo became known to the UK’s press and A&R sectors,
when they entered the Unsigned in the City battle of the bands competition in October 1995,
eventually becoming the joint winners with Kula Shaker and Performance. This provoked a bidding
war, with Placebo eventually signing with Caroline Records, who set up the Elevator Music label
so that Placebo could retain creative control and remain independent. Another party that was
impressed by Placebo’s first steps was one David Bowie, who invited the band to replace Morrissey
as the support act for a handful of European dates in February 1996. Placebo moved from playing less
than 300 people a night to upwards of 15,000. Bowie would continue to be a champion for the band
throughout the years, even collaborating on the 1999 single release of “Without You I’m Nothing.”
But back in 1996, Placebo had yet to record their debut.
Placebo started recording their debut album in early 1996 with production from Brad Wood
of Exile in Guyville and Diary fame. As their first time in a proper studio, the band naively
jumped at the opportunity to get the best out of the situation and create their own sound. “We
As they had been playing shows for almost two years, Placebo already had written the
majority of the ten songs that would end up on the record. “Nancy Boy” was no different,
having been initially penned in 1994 in Molko’s council flat in Deptford.
The chorus hook was a reaction to Britpop heroes Suede and their coy references to homosexuality,
[“We kiss in his room to a popular tune"]
as well as hipsters sexually experimentating for the sake of being trendy. “That infamous quote of
[Suede singer] Brett Anderson’s – ‘I’m a bisexual man who’s never had a homosexual experience’ – was
being reprinted in every magazine. I saw that as a very opportunistic statement,
and it led me to want to write something about tourism of the sexual kind. Which is where the
chorus comes from: ‘It all breaks down at the first rehearsal.’ I had in mind a tourist who
gets stuck in and then realises they’re out of their depth.”
“Nancy Boy” references sex in an overt manner akin to PJ Harvey
but with a bisexual twist.
On the early versions of the track,
“She’s coming over me” is followed by Molko yelping orgasmically,
a touch that is tastefully removed for the album version.
The song’s lyrics are a patchwork of ideas,
all exceedingly relevant to Molko at the time: drugs, cross-dressing, fetishes and casual sex.
“It’s not your run-of-the-mill, boy-meets-girl song. It doesn’t promote
promiscuity but it doesn’t judge it either.”
It’s title takes a derogatory term for a homosexual man and appropriates it as a point of pride,
reversing the hate so that Molko can gain power from it. He is the Nancy Boy.
Musically, the song is a three-chorded punk rock song, not too dissimilar from their previous singles “Bruise Pristine”
and “Teenage Angst;”
dark, brooding, anthemic in a Sonic Youth-kinda way.
The band would start experimenting with loops and samples more obviously on Without You I’m Nothing,
but “Nancy Boy” displays one of their first tentative steps. “Sonically,
we tried to capture a kind of drug-induced sexual rush; it’s got a rising car sound which was meant
to kind of reproduce the first rushes of E,
and it’s obvious that the character in the song is kind of drug-crazed at that moment.
There are times in your life where you are so off your head that all you really want to do is fuck.”
The album, self titled, would be released in July 1996,
but would initially only peak at number 40 in the UK charts. Not long after its release,
after months of growing tension Schultzberg was fired in late 1996 and replaced by an Englishman,
former Breed sticksman Steve Hewitt. After three poor charting singles,
the band’s fortunes were changed in January 1997 with the release of the “Nancy Boy” single. It
would hit number 4 in the UK Charts and give this little band national exposure on Top of the Pops.
While Britain had previously experienced the likes of Bowie, Marc Almond and Boy George,
in the context of a rock band, Molko’s androgyny provoked equal parts intrigue and disgust. “It did
amaze me at the time how much a cock in a frock was still shocking at the end of the 20th century.
It was as if Boy George had never existed! It was alright to cross-dress in pop, but to go
into grunge territory with a dress was so shocking to people.”
But in the year directly after “Nancy Boy” its tales of different partners every night and
out of sight narcotics became a self fulfilling prophecy.
“Nancy Boy”’s success wasn’t a fluke, but it definitely wasn’t expected.
They'd been signed for less than twelve months and now were one of the most talked about bands
in Britain. Not only did this make their album reenter the chart at number five, but it shot
the band into the spotlight. It’s safe to say that they weren’t ready for the headline tours,
magazine covers and overwhelming attention. And succeeding at rock’n’roll gave them
increased access to sex and drugs. “We had this feeling of utter disbelief,
as if we were naughty schoolchildren that had fooled everyone and were about to be
found out any minute. So we embraced the rock n' roll lifestyle with enormous enthusiasm,
as I think every young band should, you know?”
A couple of weeks before “Nancy Boy” entered the UK Charts,
Placebo played to 20,000 people at Bowie’s 50th Birthday show at Madison Square Garden,
flanked with their personal heroes Sonic Youth, The Cure and Lou Reed. This would be the kickoff
of six months of drug-fuelled sex-filled touring; twinned Molko’s increased interaction
with the press, which though a desired interviewee and quick with a soundbite,
he was prone to exaggeration, backbiting and generally being a PR nightmare.
During this period he claimed to have spent £700 a week on drugs,
had between 10 and 500 sex partners, and indulged in a champagne-nourished three day long orgy.
Even out of an interview setting, his way with words would get him into trouble.
At a BRIT Awards afterparty held for the Spice Girls, while off his face Molko insulted someone’s
wife within earshot of that someone and got himself promptly launched across the room,
breaking a couple of ribs in the process. As he summed up to the NME in 1998:
“We'd left a trail of blood and spunk all over the country.”
It was getting to the point where his sordid antics were beginning to overshadow Placebo’s
musical output. “I think I really, really desperately wanted to be rock'n'roll, and I
think we took our souls and bodies to an extreme and then realised we couldn't do it any more.
There's only so far you can go with that. Once it begins to change your personality, it starts
to get scary.” At the end of 1997, after a tour playing enormodomes
across Europe with U2, Placebo would start writing demos for followup Without You I’m Nothing,
at the same time reflecting on the absurdity of their last year. “This album has the mood of…
post-coital comedown. There’s a real melancholia on it; that feeling of having…fucked yourself
empty. But we were never as bad as Led Zeppelin.”
Emerging late in the album-recording process was “Pure Morning” which,
with its Zeppelin-sized drums and hypnotic mantras, became the album’s first single.
While just as fixated on drugs and sexuality as “Nancy Boy,”
“Pure Morning” acts as more of a moment of clarity after the hangover.
Slower, more introspective, and with electronic flourishes,
Molko’s vocal less adolescently shrill and more world-weary akin to Lou Reed.
As Molko said to Billboard: “It’s a song about coming down
when the rest of the world is waking up. How many times have you come out of a club when the sun
is coming up and others are going to work? You feel dislocated. You just want someone to slip
their arm around you and make slumber easier.”
Again, it reached number four on the UK Singles Chart and proved that they were more than that
glam-punk mode. More than that though, it was also the band’s first substantial hit
in the US, making it to number 19 on the Billboard Alternative Chart.
But it also embodied a time in Molko’s life that in later years he was hesitant to return to.
Since “Pure Morning” the band have gone from strength to strength. Though they would
never have a UK chart placing as high as either “Nancy Boy” or “Pure Morning,” with
each new album Placebo evolved their sound and grew their fanbase especially across Europe.
By the release of 2000’s Black Market Music, the band had matured and decided to retire “Nancy
Boy” from their live sets, and though it would periodically reappear, Molko does not care for
the song. ”I view "Nancy Boy" in a way I imagine Radiohead look at "Creep". I just wish the song
that propelled us into the limelight had been a little bit better written. It's the lyrics that
make me cringe most. They're me trying to find my feet.”
“Pure Morning” would go the same way, slowly phased out through the Meds tour
and then not played again until their 20th anniversary shows starting in 2016. As with
“Nancy Boy” the band felt they had outgrown the song and Molko no longer felt he had an emotional
connection to the person he was when he wrote it: "I'd say that they're definitely not my best work,
but they're better than anything Noel Gallagher's ever written. Besides, my lyrics have always been
ambiguous. The lyrics of `Pure Morning' just came off the top of my head when we were writing in the
studio. At least it's not "I'm feeling supersonic, give me gin and tonic". It's not exactly that bad,
but it's in that vein I must admit.”
Perhaps with Molko’s detox and sobering after the release of Meds, he no longer wanted to be
confronted by the fucked up kid he once was. In 2017 Molko told NME that after their retrospective
A Place For Us to Dream tour he may never play the songs again. And as of writing, they haven’t.
At the time Placebo were seen as a reaction to Britpop, a band that didn’t grow up here but found
the whole retro-worship thing to be increasingly one-note. But as an influence they were the critical
missing link between glam and post-punk and later groups like The National, Yeah Yeah Yeahs,
The Killers, Muse and My Chemical Romance. “Nancy Boy” was a make-up splattered day-glo guiding
light showing that rock music could be more than Cigarettes, Alcohol and Living Forever. But more
than that with Brian Molko a generation of LGBT kids found a role model and source of comfort for
what they were going through; unafraid to delve into subjects that the Brett Andersons of Britpop
were too bashful to sing about.
Placebo were not shy and coy, for they gave us “Nancy Boy.”
Are you bored and don’t know what to do with your life? Feel like you need
a little bit more knowledge in you? Well, then Skillshare may be the service for you.
Skillshare is an online learning community for anyone who wants to learn something new, where
millions have come together to take the next step in their creative journey. This month I watched
The Stop Motion Look in After Effects. In it, Jake Barlett leads you through the process of creating
wondrous stop motion-style animations within After Effects that look just like the real thing.
But maybe you want an art skill that is a bit more analogue.
With Kimberly Shrack’s Introduction to Modern Brush Calligraphy, Skillshare has
that covered too. Today is the perfect time to do that thing you always wanted to do.
The first 1000 people who follow the link in my description, will get a free trial of Skillshare
premium. After your trial ends, Skillshare costs as little as $10 per month for unlimited learning.
So click that link, acquire a new skill and become a better you.
Thanks for watching. First I’d like to thank Pavel VohmJanin for gifting me Placebo’s
debut from my Amazon wishlist. You have my eternal gratitude. As always a big shout
out to all my supporters on Patreon. Without you there wouldn’t be a Trash Theory.
Thanks and I’ll see you in a couple of weeks.