Happiness Quote by Chris Lowe

There is something almost aggressively ordinary about Chris Lowe calling clubs "good fun", as if the entire nocturnal economy of cool can be reduced to a matey shrug. That understatement is the point. Coming from a Pet Shop Boy - a figure associated with sleek detachment, arch observation, and pop that studies emotion at one remove - the line works like a deliberate deglamorization. It drains the club of mystique and puts it back where it belongs: in the realm of people trying, for a few hours, to feel lighter.

The phrasing is telling. "Having a laugh" frames clubbing less as hedonism or transgression than as social relief, a ritual of release that is communal rather than exotic. The repetition ("good fun... having a laugh... really having a good time") reads like someone insisting on simple pleasure in a culture that overinterprets nightlife into identity, status, or art. Lowe is sidestepping the curated narrative: no talk of edge, authenticity, or scene politics, just the basic human need to be together in noise and motion.

Context matters, too. British club culture - especially from the late 70s through the 90s - was both escapist and politically charged, a haven for queer expression and subcultural invention. Lowe's plain language can be heard as tactical normalizing: an insistence that joy and belonging don't need justification. It's also a subtle rebuke to nostalgia merchants. The club isn't a museum of cool; it's a place you go to feel, briefly, unburdened.