The Pet Shop Boys Music of the 1980's

The Please, Disco, Actually, Introspective Years

Dec 14, 2008 James W. Coates

From "West End Girls" and "It's a Sin" to "Always On My Mind", The Pet Shop Boys sound shaped 1980's music and brought electronic dance disco back to the charts.

English electronic dance duo, The Pet Shop Boys, composed of Neil Tennant (vocals) and keyboardist Chris Lowe tasted enormous success with their very first single “West End Girls” back in 1986. The track dominated airwaves all over the globe reaching number 1 on the US Billboard Hot 100.

22 years after that landmark single, while contemporaries have all but disappeared, The Pet Shop Boys still craft catchy dance/ pop records that keep fans alive on the dancefloor.

The Pet Shop Boys in the 1980’s

Please

Released in 1986, Please set the standard for most PSB albums to follow. Filled with programmed beats, cynical, often introspective lyrics, this album introduced the world to ‘thinking’ dance music. “West End Girls” topped the charts on both sides of the Atlantic and follow up single “Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots of Money)” shared a similar top ten fate.

“Surburbia” and “Love Comes Quickly” scored big in the UK and US dance charts, but other album tracks such as “I Want a Lover”, “Violence” and “Why Don’t We Live Together” exposed the boys as lyrical craftsmen capable of injecting emotion and feelings into cold electronic music. Their first album and still one of their finest.

Disco

Rushed into the shops following the tremendous success of Please, Disco was never meant as a second album. Instead it shows an alternative side to the PSB as crafters of extended dance music intended for the clubs.

Gathering B-Sides such as “In the Night” and containing new tracks such as the intoxicating “Paninaro (Italian Remix)”, one of the few tracks to be sung/spoken by Lowe, this is more than a mere remix album, even though the bulk of the CD contains alternative, extended versions of the Please singles.

Actually

“It’s a Sin” preluded the 1987 release of their second studio album. Filled with danceable pop, and tales of betrayal (“What Have I Done to Deserve This”), longing (“It Couldn’t Happen Here”, “Heart”), arranged love affairs (“Rent”) and modern relationships (“Shopping”), the boys scored another deserved hit album.

Two tracks made the US top ten including their duet with Dusty Springfield on the disturbingly pretty (“What Have I Done to Deserve This”). This album introduced extremely long titles that quickly became a PSB trademark.

Introspective

Pegged as their third disc, Introspective was more of a mini album. Containing a mere eight tracks in extended versions, this album coincided with two brilliant singles lifted from the collection. “Domino Dancing” strayed from the sound the Pet Shop Boys honed on their previous two releases, favouring a more Latin zest popular during 1988’s short- lived Miami freestyle sound.

The second single, “Always on My Mind”, a cover of a track made famous by Willie Nelson and Elvis, proved that the PSB could take a lonely country song and inject new life into it, creating a track of their own. Their last album of the 1980’s, Introspective was also the last album to produce any singles to penetrate the Billboard Top 40 in the US.

While the Pet Shop Boys were never capable of duplicating the US success they had in the 1980’s later in their career, they continued to produce cutting edge dance music into the 1990’s and the 2000’s.

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