Pet Shop Boys 'West End Girls'

Chart Peak: 1 [2 weeks]
YouTube

Well, as there's a bit of March left I thought I might as well wrap up the four songs that appear only on Now '86 (or Now Apostrophe86 as I've taken to calling it) and aren't drawn from Now 7 or Now 8. Three of them are from the first half of the year, so were perhaps considered too old to include on Now 8 - presumably both albums were being planned around the same time though Now '86 hit the shops a couple of weeks earlier - and the follow-up to the fourth is also on the vinyl and cassette Now 8. 'West End Girls' is the oldest of the quartet and was in fact released in October 1985 but topped the chart in January 1986; it later repeated that feat on the Billboard chart, making them one British act who had a US Number One that year and had topped their (or rather our) own chart too.

This version of 'West End Girls' is of course a re-recording of the original version that was produced by Bobby Orlando after Neil Tennant passed him a demo tape while in New York on assignment for Smash Hits. As well as dropping the clumsy lyric about "Joe Stalin", Stephen Hague's new production adds a smoothness that's rather effective in this case, setting a luxuriant backdrop for Tennant's deadpan vocal and complex lyrical ideas. Some elements, particularly the trumpet, are a little reminiscent of 'This Is Not America' by David Bowie and the Pat Metheny Group from earlier in 1985, though this may be coincidental. Even claims that this was the first rap Number One are a little stretched, it's a stylish launch to one of the most successful singles careers in British pop.

Also appearing on: Now 7, 8, 10, 11, 15, 18, 20, 26, 28 [as Absolutely Fabulous], 35, 72
Available on: Please

Pet Shop Boys 'Suburbia'

Chart Peak: 8
YouTube

Charted at No. 23 on 30th September, reached No. 8 for 2 weeks in mid-October. 'Suburbia' is the group's 4th Top 20 hit in less than a year.

In contrast to the amount of Duran Duran that I unwillingly have inflicted on me, the PSBs seem like an act who aren't really on enough Now albums. Nine appearances in their own right (plus the one under a pseudonym and their guest appearance with Robbie Williams) hardly seems to scratch the surface of their run of hit singles over nearly 25 years, and you'd think they're exactly the sort of act who'd embrace the concept. Perhaps because of the perspective that writing this blog has given me, I've found myself warming to the duo and even bought a best-of album although the weird twist is that most of my favourite tracks of theirs aren't in the Now series; and I'm not just showing off there, I'm including some of their biggest hits like 'It's A Sin' and 'West End Girls'. In fact the version of the Pet Shop Boys on the Now albums is a version I like less than the one I know from their full chart career.

Back when I was an eight-year old hearing this song, I didn't know what Suburbia was, let alone that I lived in it (Kenton, Middlesex, if you wanted to know). I promise it's not only because of my location that I've never been very fond of this song (after all, Neil Tennant is from a suburb too); it just feels a bit too much of a cliche. Worse, it feels a bit thin as a record, despite the fact that this single version is re-recorded from the original album track. If anything I actually prefer the original B-side 'Paninaro', which was later re-recorded and became a hit in its own right in 1995. That didn't get onto a Now album either.

Also appearing on: Now 7, 10, 11, 15, 18, 20, 26, 28 [as Absolutely Fabulous], 35, 72
Available on: Ultimate [+Video]

Pet Shop Boys 'Being Boring'

Chart Peak: UK 20
YouTube
You kind of imagine that the Pet Shop Boys would have liked to be on more Now albums than they actually are. 'Being Boring' isn't among their ten UK appearances in their own right - I'd be tempted to mention that it was because it only got to 20 (unusually low at that point in their career) but then again three of their Number Ones didn't make it either.

The song is very much a fan favourite though, beloved enough to have its own website. Lyrically, it's Neil Tennant on excellent form and unusually emotionally open: he tells part of his life story and refers obliquely but unmistakably to the AIDS crisis. Indeed the song is about a friend of his who died young although I'm not sure that was public knowledge at the time. Of course being the PSBs they can't do the song without some trace of in-jokes, hence the song title which mocks their own reputation. Unfortunately, the music threatens to come a bit close for comfort once or twice - it's a little too slow, a little too polished, a bit too long (the version here is six minutes, which is shorter than the album version but longer than the 7" edit) but it's just about emotional enough (in a very British, guarded way) to get away with it.

Available on: Behaviour

Pet Shop Boys 'Go West'

Chart Peak: 2

YouTube

'Go West', a cover of the 1979 Village People hit, gave Neil and Chris a No.2 smash in September '93 as the follow-up to 'Can You Forgive Her?'

I think that's what the sleeve note says, anyway, it's a bit difficult to read light grey against a pale red background. The PSBs were of course no strangers to the Elvis catalogue themselves, but picked a slightly less obvious source this time around: obviously the Village People were hardly an unknown act or a surprising influence for them to draw upon, but this was not their biggest hit and indeed this version proved to be more successful in almost every major market (as far as I know it was never released as a single in the USA). I don't think I was alone in not having knowingly heard the original version when this came out.

Unsurprisingly for a Village People song, there's an evident gay subtext - although the writers themselves apparently never confirmed this, it's obvious that the song is about the migration of the US gay community towards San Francisco, though of course the title also refers to the older tradition of Americans seeking freedom and opportunity in the West. The PSBs arrangement (which also earns them a writing credit for an extra verse) makes this subtext more explicit, but also more ironic, with its use of Soviet-style imagery in the song itself and even more so in the video. It's something of a sad irony, I suppose, because of the discovery of AIDS in the years since the original song was written - it's hard not to imagine that the hope here is more a mythical one than the practical one in the Village People's original. Still, that doesn't mean the hope's gone entirely, and Tennant/Lowe's lyric speaks of a promised land "if we stand our ground". The big Broadway choir chanting the start of each line emphasises the upbeat tone intended. Indeed it was anthemic enough that this version was adapted for football chants all over Europe, a development which I'd think would have surprised and amused Neil Tennant.

Confidential to UB40: This is how you do a cover version.

Also appearing on: Now 7, 8, 10, 11, 15, 18, 20, 28 [as Absolutely Fabulous], 35, 72
Available on: PopArt - The Hits [+video]

Robbie Williams with Pet Shop Boys 'She's Madonna'

Chart Peak: 16

YouTube

Robbie teams up with the Pet Shop Boys on the pulsing new single 'She's Madonna', described as "a dynamic piece of synth-pop"... The video shows Robbie as we have never seen him before and features a plethora of LA's most famous (and infamous) drag queens.

Madonna herself has famously never appeared on a Now album, but she's also exceptional in pop music culture for the sheer number of hits by other people which refer to her or spin off somehow from her fame - anything from the self-aggrandising ('If Madonna Calls' by Junior Vasquez), through the brilliantly odd ('The Wheels On The Bus' by Mad Donna) to the unspeakably dreadful ('Do It With Madonna' by the Androids). Inevitably, some of this has slipped into the Now discography, but rarely has it been more obvious than with Robbie's hit supposedly based on Guy Ritchie's parting words to the girlfriend he left for Ms Ciccone. It's a pretty thin idea for a song, in all honesty, and the lyrics fail to live up to even this limited promise; the Pet Shop Boys production and backing vocals are so perfunctory it's hard not to suspect that they were in it for the postmodern appeal of collaborating with Williams. He presumably is a fan of theirs anyway, but they fit this song in particular because of its obvious flirtation with gay or at least sexually ambiguous imagery, especially in the video.

This was the third single from the infamous Rudebox album, and it's a sign of where his career was at the time that he could get away with releasing an album full of half-baked in-jokes and odd cover versions. It didn't last though, and whilst the Number 16 peak of this single would be considered a success for most people, it was at the time his second-lowest-charting solo single and one of only three to have fallen short of the Top 10. The album itself, despite would would again be considered massive initial sales for almost any other act, was a major flop by his standards which apparently led to heads rolling at EMI. It was outsold by Take That's comeback release (see disc 1) and although it did slightly better internationally, it did lead to a couple of years' silence from Williams. His career still doesn't seem to be back in gear.

Also appearing on: Now 34, 37, 38, 39, 41, 42, 44, 45, 47, 48, 49, 51 (with Nicole Kidman), 52 (with 1 Giant Leap & Maxi Jazz), 54, 55, 56, 59, 60, 62, 63, 65, 74
Available on: Rudebox [+video]

Pet Shop Boys 'Opportunities (Let's Make Lots Of Money)'

Chart Peak: 11

YouTube

Following 'West End Girls' and 'Love Comes Quickly', 'Opportunities' became the Pet Shop Boys' 3rd U.K. hit single when it reached No.11 in June 1986.

It seems slightly odd now that as big a hit as 'West End Girls' managed to elude the Now albums, but it was a victim of timing - it became a hit too late for Now 6 and must have seemed too much like old news for this album. So instead they make their first appearance with this single which, like their first hit, failed to chart in its original form and finally succeded in a re-recorded version. It's also their only single to chart higher in the US than in the UK, though a couple of others have matched positions exactly.

It's a track I remember from the time (unlike 'Love Comes Quickly) and one that seems of its time in more ways than one. The lyric is a very obvious satire on Thatcherism (I think I even grasped the general idea when I was eight) and the production is a typically busy dancefloor-inspired one of the era that sounds a bit desperate now; although of course there's a possibility that this was the intention all along. If so, it merely strengthens the impression that this, like a lot of PSB material, merits a nod of recognition rather than genuine enjoyment.


Also appearing on: Now 8, 10, 11, 15, 18, 20, 26, 28 [as Absolutely Fabulous], 35, 72
Available on: Discography - Complete Singles Collection

Pet Shop Boys 'Where The Streets Have No Name (I Can't Take My Eyes Off You)'

Chart Peak: 4

YouTube

Cute bit of sequencing there. It's not totally forced: despite the several months' gap between the singles, this was the earliest Now album they could have included the track on, as there were only two albums in 1991.

With so many appearances I'm slightly surprised to notice that this is only the second time I've had cause to write about the PSBs on here. Anyway, here they are with their medley pitting the 1987 U2 single against the Boys Town Gang's camp disco arrangement of 'Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You'. Coincidentally, both those singles had peaked at 4 in the UK, and so did this (as a double-A with the self-penned 'How Do You Expect To Be Taken Seriously', which adds up to one of the longest titles ever for a Top 10 entry). It's sort of a cute idea, and makes some sort of sense as a parody of Bono's rather overblown vocal style and his tendency to self-importance; but as I'm sure they'd have realised, actually recording something like that, releasing it as a single and expecting people to buy it and put it into the chart just to make your in-jokey point is itself a bit of a self-important thing to do. It also wasn't exactly topical by 1991. Nowadays I suppose they could just upload it on their Facebook page and everyone could appreciate it for what it was.

Bono's reported reaction: "What have I done to deserve this?"

Also appearing on: Now 7, 8, 10, 11, 15, 18, 26, 28 [as Absolutely Fabulous], 35, 72
Available on: Ultimate

The Pet Shop Boys 'Rent'

Chart Peak: 8

YouTube

Another slightly curious bit of sequencing: this isn't the most outlandishly dramatic record the PSBs have ever made and would seem to risk interrupting some of the momentum built up by the first track. 'Rent' was of course part of what Neil Tennant would call the bands's imperial phase, their seventh of seventeen consecutive Top 20 singles - in fact this was a bit of a blip in "only" reaching Number 8, when the four singles either side of it were all Top 3 hits.

I don't really remember whether I heard this song at the time. I certainly wouldn't have understood what it was about at that age. But the Pet Shop Boys were undoubtedly one of the biggest acts around at the time and this wouldn't have struck me as a big stylistic change. Now I'm older I can tell what they're driving at: this is obviously the song of somebody desperate for the affections of a "lover" who exploits them but supports them materially ie, "I love you, you pay my rent" - as the Wikipedia article astutely notes, this phrasing especially hints at the stereotype of a rent-boy. It's difficult to wade through all the layers of irony and detachment in a Tennant/Lowe song and discern where if anywhere our sympathies should lie, but it doesn't come across as a lament as such; not that our protagonist necessarily considers this situation ideal, but he (or possibly she) seems on the face of it to be dealing with it as the reality that's there: "Words mean so little and money less, when you're lying next to me". But of course, this could be merely a brave face.

Musically, the track is towards the more restrained end of their repertoire, although it's a relatively animated vocal performance from Tennant. What I can't tell you, even after all that, is whether I like it or not: this is why they were such a difficult act to approach here.

Also appearing on: Now 7, 8, 11, 15, 18, 20, 26, 28 [as Absolutely Fabulous], 35, 72
Available on: Pop Art: Pet Shop Boys - The Hits