According to Wikipedia (as of this writing, at least) Paninaro is…

a subculture born in Milan, Italy during the early 1980s at a fast food restaurant called Al Panino (in English: At the Sandwich Shop). The subculture was famous for its apolitical nature and its obsessions with fashion and the United States, contrasting sharply with the hyperpoliticized 1970s. It did develop consequently with the vapid hedonism on the 80s, fostered by reaganomics, thatcherism and deregulation liberalism, reinforced by the diffusion in Italy of privately-owned television channels which vehiculated messages of consumerism and a fetishitic urge of self-affirmation through status symbols.

According to Neil Tennant, he and Chris Lowe had heard about the frowned-upon paninari, young people madly in love with designer clothing and holding a great devotion to new wave records and thought “how fabulous - so do we!” Famously, this is the first song to include Chris Lowe’s vocals, and it was also written primarily by Lowe, originally composed as the backing track for a gay disco record for another Tom Watkins-managed act, The Hudsons. After the initial session recording at Abbey Road, the duo reprogrammed the song with Adrian Cook (who had been attached to the aborted first tour) utilizing sounds from previously-recorded Pet Shop Boys tracks on the Fairlight.

“It was a nightmare, Chris doing his vocal,” Tennant has stated, referring to the fact that Lowe would only do two takes. Lowe’s response? “You know what I’m like.”

One of those songs that pretty much every fan likes, “Paninaro” was featured in the second half of Pet Shop Boys’ recent tour, but let’s take a look at the unreleased live version from the MCMLXXXIX tour:

(And for those of you who are about to say “Hey, the original “Paninaro” wasn’t a single: while it was originally offered up as the B-side to “Suburbia,” “Paninaro” saw a limited-edition single release in Italy, hence its mention here and yes, I’ll probably also discuss the 1995 remix as well when I get around to it. Nyah.)

Is there a more singable chorus in the Pet Shop Boys catalogue than that of “Suburbia”? My vote is a firm “No.” It’s the sort of melody that gets stuck in your head so that you’re stuck in the self-check registers at the grocery, murmuring “Let’s take a ride and run with the dogs tonight…”

It’s probably the earliest Pet Shop Boys I remember being stunned by - it’s pop and singable to be sure, but it’s an incredibly busy song as well. In addition to the drums (of which there’s two distinct percussion lines), bass line, piano line, synthesizers, and vocal, there’s a plethora of samples layered on top - barking dogs, machine guns, crashing cars, klaxons blaring. It’s a big-sounding record, the sort of thing that says “There may be only two of us, but we’re quite good at making a racket on our own.”

The single, released in September 1986, is a completely re-recorded version of the more-sedate track that appears on Please. “It’s a hard lyric, soft tune. That was our idea - to write disco music with un-disco lyrics,” states Tennant in the liner notes for the re-released version of the album. Inspired by Penelope Spheeris’s film of the same name, the lyrics to “Suburbia” cover a common English fictional trope: the idea that society in the burbs is actually more perverse than the city people are trying to escape. The riot taking place in the song starts from sheer boredom more than anything else, and the combination of dark lyrics and a happy melody underscores the simultaneous euphoria and despair that defined Thatcher’s England.

This idea of “disco music with un-disco lyrics” is one of those things that continues attracts me to the music of Pet Shop Boys. In America, I’m sure they’ll be forever regarded as “camp¹,” but that’s not surprising - as I discussed in my overview of “Opportunities,” the Stateside pop audience doesn’t quite get it when an artist does something that requires any thought, and the collision of nihilism and dancebeats was probably more confusing than interesting to them. Evidence of this is probably in the numbers: while the song hit #8 on the UK pop charts, it only reached 70th on the Billboard Top 100th and 46 on the Dance chart.

Favorite Versions:
“Suburbia (The Full Horror)” is available on Disco and I love all nine minutes of it. It sounds more like a Frankie-era Trevor Horn production than Julian Mendelsohn, with a spoken word bit, a ton of extra dog sounds, a few extra car crashes, and about a dozen builds. The 7″ version featured here is basically that version cut down for radio play. Ahh, pop excess.

¹Dan Hopper from the ordinarily-quite-entertaining BestWeekEver.tv blog recently described Discography as a bad album he liked. This ignores two facts: the first being that it’s not at all bad, especially compared to his other selections, and that it’s not an album, but a compilation. For some reason, the latter bothers me more than the former.

Released a month before Pet Shop Boys’ first album Please, “Love Comes Quickly” is a perfectly straightforward pop song with slick production and a few nice couplets, more notable for the excellent sleeve design (the first by the duo’s longtime collaborator Mark Farrow, with input from Chris Lowe) than the track itself, an ethereal paean to the power of love featuring a heavy bassline and a very repetitive Fairlight chord. Recorded the same night as a track that would eventually become “I’m not scared,” “Love comes quickly” was created while the duo was in what Tennant has described as “our beautiful Italian disco mood.”

It’s amusing (at least to me) that my favorite bit, the lyric at 2:37, “I know it sounds ridiculous, but speaking from experience,” was actually written by producer Stephen Hague, who felt there needed to be “a middle bit” holding the song together. That fact, along with the expensive sax solo that can barely be heard in the track (that’s Andy Mackay from Roxy Music, which is quite possibly the most big-budget, 80s thing the duo could have done at this point in their careers) are far more interesting to me than song itself, especially when there’s a sleeve like this to consider:

Tennant’s thoughts about the above design came out in a 1999 interview conducted to promote Nightlife, in which Neil and writer Mirielle Silcott have the following exchange:

M: Speaking of gay… have you ever publicly come out? Did you ever feel like you needed to?

NT: I was always gay in my private life, and also the imagery in our songs, and our image, there was something pretty gay about it all. But in the 1980s, we didn’t say we were gay. We had a big teen following and I’ve always thought it more exciting when the sexuality thing is all mysterious. I mean, do you remember the record “Love Comes Quickly” [”Love Comes Quickly”: Released March, 1986. #11 on U.K. charts.]? The cover image was Chris wearing that Boy cap, and I just thought, “That’s incredibly gay! We’re OUT!”

M: But people just took it as a teen pop record?

NT: Yes, exactly. Anyway, five years ago I did this interview for a magazine in England and it was a new gay magazine. I figured it would seem churlish not to say that I was gay in a new gay magazine. But it wasn’t much of a surprise, was it? I never pretended to be straight. We’ve never done fake girlfriends, or sexy videos with girls [except “Being Boring,” 1990, Bruce Weber director, lots of sexy girls and boys. PSB only cameo in it for 2.5 seconds]¹.

“Love comes quickly” isn’t a bad track by any stretch (even if I grow very tired of the “Ah-Ah-Ah-Ah” sample), but it lacks the intelligence and wit that marks most Pet Shop Boys singles. It’s danceable, to be sure, and it sounds fantastic on a large system, but Tennant’s vocal doesn’t seem mixed quite to my tastes and the lyrics are no great shakes, especially compared to the earlier doses of smart pop the duo had released.

It’s telling that my favorite version of the song is the furthest departed from the original template. “Love comes quickly” was remixed by Blank & Jones in 2003 for their mix album Relax, taking a decent pop song from the 80s and turning it into a fantastic “chill out” track, excising the original beat entirely and using Tennant’s vocal as a centerpiece counterpointed with guitar flourishes and all nestled in a warm synth sound with a lively backing:

Favorite Versions: The Blank & Jones mix, rather obviously, and the extended dance mix from Disco. The latter builds wonderfully, hinting at the song’s various elements before hitting at just the right point. There’s also a live version on the “I get along” single that’s very listenable - it’s a bit “rock,” but that’s what they were doing at the time.

¹A footnote about Silcott’s asides: the “Se a vida é (That’s the way life is)” video from 1996 features attractive people of both genders. Annoyingly, the side comments (in this 8-year-old article, I know) are irritating and frequently just plain wrong. A good, lively interview, spoiled by a writer too in love with their own words.

“Opportunities (Let’s make lots of money)” was the second single released by Pet Shop Boys and served as the second half of the duo’s short-lived relationship with Epic Records¹. The first version, mixed by Bobby Orlando, was never released, replaced with a second mix by J. J. Jeclazik of Art of Noise and producer Nicholas Froome. This remixed version debuted on July 1, 1985 and charted at 116 on the UK charts, signalling an end to the duo’s relationship with Epic¹.

It was the second release of “West End girls,” as produced by Stephen Hague, that prompted yet another mix of the song. This Hague-produced version of “Opportunities” was released on the heels of Please and did significantly better, this time reaching 11th place on the UK chart, 10th on the stateside Billboard Hot 100, and #3 on the Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart issued by Billboard. The most notable change between these versions is the removal of a spoken-word coda to the track, deemed too pretentious after some examination by Tennant and Lowe.

The lyrics, written by Tennant after Lowe suggested they write a song around the line “Let’s make lots of money,” satirize consumer culture and Thatcherism as the narrator attempts to get the listener on board for a get-rich-quick scheme. The monologue of the song is roughly based around Dustin Hoffman’s character in Midnight Cowboy, and Tennant has stated that he’s quite sure that whatever the scheme is, it’s going to fail.

Listeners (particularly in the States) being what they are, many misinterpreted the track as a manifesto for the band, a declaration that they were only in it for the money. Wayne Studer, PhD, believes this perception is one of the earliest indications that Pet Shop Boys would never be fully accepted in America, and it could easily be argued that Americans don’t want to think at all when it comes to their pop music. If a song is not about dancing, loving, or fucking, its chance of chart success is roughly equal to that of a rabbit thrown into a dog cage.

Those that didn’t interpret the song as the band’s mission statement seem to have embraced it as an anthem glorifying their own consumerist greed. The song has served as the opening theme for Beauty And The Geek, an American reality show wherein mismatched couples (a media-friendly version of “attractive” woman and the sort of guy who loves Star Trek more than bathing) are pitted against each other for a cash prize. In addition to this, it was also used for another, more short-lived reality program featuring billionaire Mark Cuban: The Benefactor. Aside from these more prominent placements, it’s also frequently used as “bumper” music during financial reporting on networks such as CNN and FOX News, showing either a heightened sense or irony, or complete cluelessness.

As far as the song itself goes, the production (particularly the Hague version) shows a couple of notable influences: the sharp drums feature a jackhammer beat that’s not a million miles away from the industrial-style percussion used on Depeche Mode’s Some Great Reward, and the cut-and-paste treatment of the sampled background vocals can definitely be linked to Jeclazik’s work with Art of Noise. Working with an already club-friendly track, Shep Pettibone certainly helped elevate second release’s 12″ version to its high placement on the Billboard Dance charts with a smart, propulsive build to the introduction of the constantly-quoted “I’ve got the brains / you’ve got the looks” lyric.

Despite any misunderstanding on the part of listeners, “Opportunities (Let’s make lots of money)” now serves as an early sign that Tennant and Lowe would eventually become the smartest pop songwriting duo of the past three decades.

Favorite Versions: The live one on the Performance tour. Incredible, funny staging. Since YouTube and DailyMotion don’t have that version handy, here’s the live version from Montage, another favorite:

¹We’ll ignore the release of “One More Chance” in three markets, for now. If I can ever bring it upon myself to pick up that horribly-designed ZYX box set, I’ll probably get back to it.

² For completeness’s sake, it should be mentioned that the Jeclazik-produced version was first made available on CD with the out-of-print Essentials compilation from 1998 and can still be had on the remastered 2CD edition of Please.

I’m fairly sure my long-held apathy for “West End girls” stems from overexposure to the song. As Brandon Flowers from The Killers pointed out on Pet Shop Boys: A Life In Pop, “West End girls” shows up on every 80s flashback lunch hour radio program across the country and I’d long ago reached the point would rather hear a remix or live version of the song than the original. In fact, I think the writing of this prompted the first self-chosen listening of the song in over a decade. (Shuffle play, however, does ensure that I do hear it as often as the iPod algorithm dictates.)

“West End girls” wasn’t an instant hit, despite what many people believe; in fact, the track was released twice, with two other singles (”Opportunities” and “One more chance”) being released in the interim. The original, Bobby Orlando-produced version of the track was put out through on Epic Records in April of 1984, failing to enter the the UK charts while becoming a minor dancefloor hit in France, The Netherlands, and the States.

It was only after Stephen Hague significantly reworked the song, removing the stripped-down New York City “street” sound that Orlando championed in acts like The Flirts and replacing it with a slightly gloomy atmosphere while slowing down Tennant’s delivery, that a genuine “hit” was created. The redone version of the song was released in October of 1985 and rapidly climbed charts worldwide, ironically giving the duo the American success they’d implicitly been asking for by having Bobby Orlando create the original version of the record.

This combination of roundabout origins and uniquely English nature of the lyrics makes the album and Hague versions of “West End girls” sound surprisingly funky, a stark groove and minimal bassline contrasting nicely with Tennant’s infamously deadpan vocals that alternate rapping and singing from verse to chorus.

I remember being fascinated by the places named when I first heard this track: “Lake Geneva” and “Finland Station” were huge, imaginary spaces to me, imagined London Underground stops instead of ports of call during Lenin’s retreat to Russia just before the Revolution, and I’d only known of the “West End” vaguely, at best knowing that it was a part of London. Especially fascinating to me is the nature of the lyrics, especially when taken holistically with the rest of the track. “West End girls” serves as a quirky pop song and quasi-fictional travelogue, a sexual undercurrent readily apparent not just because of the seductive bassline and beats, but for the verbal content:

Too many shadows, whispering voices
faces on posters, too many choices
If? When? Why? What?
How much have you got?
Have you got it? Do you get it?
If so, how often?
Which do you choose
a hard or soft option?
(How much do you need?)

And, later:

You got a heart of glass or a heart of stone?
Just you wait ’til I get you home

I distinctly remember these lines standing out, the first time anything overtly sexual had hit my ears as such. You’ll have to bear with me: I was 12. I’d just started to figure out what girls were for besides annoying the crap out of me.

It may not be my favorite Pet Shop Boys song, but it’s certainly the most important Pet Shop Boys song. A worldwide number one that still gets regular airplay today while establishing the group’s aesthetic early on, not just through “West End girls” itself, but in the sleeve’s design as well as the music video directed by photographer Eric Watson and Andy Morahan? Hard to beat that. On a personal note, the dour lyrics (how many other pop songs at the time told you “sometimes, you’re better off dead?”), combined with a danceability probably helped define tastes I still have to this day.

My Favorite Version(s): Sasha’s 1994 remix, the live versions from Concrete or Montage, or the Extended Dance Version featured on Disco.