As part of my year-long music writing blog, I am trying to demolish deeply-held prejudices about music, and one of those is that, while the Pet Shop Boys write great tunes, their lyrics are overrated. I thought I would ask the Afterword cognoscenti to inform me which would be the best song to confound my misjudgement (Being Boring, maybe?).

But then I though, let’s make this a bit more fun. While I don’t particularly rate the music of the Divine Comedy, Neil Hannon writes very impressive lyrics (see clip). Every now and then the Afterword used to do band duels (Cream vs. Hendrix, Roxy Music vs Talking Heads, Fairport Convention vs. Pentangle vs. Steeleye Span, etc*).

I haven’t seen one of these artificially-contrived wrestling deathmatches recently, so – it’s a fine May weekend (well it is here in Bonn). So why not draw out your keyboard epee and mouse foil and get fencing*** on this fraught issue?

Pet Shop Boys or The Divine Comedy?

Fight fight fight!**

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*Obviously the former in all three examples

**Not really channeling my inner Quaker here

***And no fence-sitting, please.