"The Night I Fell in Love" is a song on the Pet Shop Boys' 2002 album Release. The lyrics were written by Neil Tennant and the music co-written with Chris Lowe.
The song describes a homosexual encounter between a teenage boy (who is telling the story) and his rap music idol after a concert. The idol is never named, but references in the lyrics to Dr. Dre and homophobia in rap music make it possible to identify him as music superstar Eminem. The most obvious reference is when the musician refers to Eminem's song "Stan":
- Then he joked "hey man,
your name isn't Stan, is it?
We should be together!"
Tennant wrote the song after hearing Eminem defending his often homophobic lyrics saying he was representing other people's opinions, such as homophobia in society or rap music. Tennant saw a double meaning in this, and also took it to mean that there are gay rap stars. Eminem has not publicly commented on the song, although Dr. Dre said he was amused by hearing it, and that there might be a backlash.
Eminem responded to the track in his song "Canibitch", in which Eminem and Dr. Dre run over the Pet Shop Boys with their car:
(What was that?) Pet Shop Boys
The reference to "Stan" makes "The Night I Fell in Love" a double answer song, as Eminem's original song refers to "In the Air Tonight" by Phil Collins.
Famous quotes containing the words night, fell and/or love:
“The night has been unruly. Where we lay,
Our chimneys were blown down, and, as they say,
Lamentings heard i’ th’ air, strange screams of death,
And prophesying with accents terrible
Of dire combustion and confused events,
New-hatched to the woeful time.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“‘Whence thou return’st, and whither wentst, I know;
For God is also in sleep; and dreams advise,
Which he hath sent propitious, some great good
Presaging, since, with sorrow and heart’s distress,
Wearied I fell asleep: but now lead on;
In me is no delay; without thee here to stay,
Is to go hence unwilling; thou to me
Art all things under Heaven, all places thou,”
—John Milton (1608–1674)
“I have known no experience more distressing than the discovery that Negroes didn’t love me. Unutterable loneliness claimed me. I felt without roots, like a man without a country ...”
—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 1, ch. 10 (1962)