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Domino Dancing

Writers - Tennant/Lowe
First released - 1988
Original album - Introspective
Producer - Lewis A. Martineé, Pet Shop Boys
Subsequent albums - Discography, PopArt, Pandemonium, Ultimate, Inner Sanctum, Smash
Other releases - single (UK #7, US #18, US Dance #5)

Neil says that the title of this song was inspired during a stay on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia. "In the evening there was nothing to do except play dominoes; this friend of ours [their personal assistant and Chris's roommate, the late Pete Andreas] always used to beat us, and he used to do this celebratory dance." Despite this prosaic origin, "domino dancing" became Neil's metaphor for a love relationship breaking down because of jealousy. As he once described it, he "created a scenario of, you know, a guy going out with a beautiful girl and all the guys are looking at her on the beach in her bikini or whatever and they’re all dropping dead before her because she’s so gorgeous and so consequently he gets jealous and the relationship collapses…." Hence, "Watch them all fall down": all the men dumbstruck by her beauty.

But this song has also been widely interpreted as a metaphor for what was going on in the early days of the AIDS crisis: carefree young people dancing (a euphemism for sex; at the very least dancing is, as has been observed, "a vertical expression of a horizontal idea") and subsequently collapsing in succession from illness like rows of dominos ( "Watch them all fall down"). Lending some credence to this alternate interpretation, Neil reportedly said of this song, shortly after its release, that it was their "Numbers," referring to a notorious 1983 track by Soft Cell that is indeed about casual sex.

Neil and Chris had traveled to Miami specifically to work with Exposé producer Lewis A. Martineé, whose work they admired, most notably with his highly successful "girl group" Exposé. This track, which exemplifies the 'eighties electro-Latino musical subgenre commonly known as "freestyle," was the result.

Continuing with the Latino theme, the accompanying video is set in Puerto Rico—at director Eric Watson's suggestion—and became notorious for its thinly veiled homoeroticism, despite a heterosexual veneer. (The final scenes of two shirtless young men—even more obviously posited as "sex objects" than the lovely young woman who served as the ostensible object of their competing desires—tussling among the crashing waves on a beach were frequently cited as evidence by critics.) Since "Domino Dancing" proved to be the Pet Shop Boys' final Top 40 hit in the United States, it has been widely speculated that this video may have had something to do with their declining U.S. popularity thereafter.

Annotations

It was almost certainly through producer Lewis A. Martineé that the Latin dance group The Voice in Fashion (who had already worked with him) ended up providing the "All day, all day" backing vocals for this song. Formed in 1985 by Salvadore Hanono and Ony Rodriguez, and soon joined by Sal's brother David Hanono, they had a major U.S. dance hit on Atlantic Records in 1987 with the Martineé-produced "Only in the Night." They signed with the Pet Shop Boys' U.S. label EMI-Manhattan around the same time they provided backup for "Domino Dancing," and they then had another though less successful dance hit of their own, "Give Me Your Love." Subsequently they enjoyed some success on Spanish and Latin American radio before breaking up for solo projects in the 1990s, including Rodriguez's stint as founding guitarist for the band The Beat Club. The Voice in Fashion eventually reformed, however, and in 2012 they released a comeback album titled The Moment of Truth, which featured their own cover rendition of "Domino Dancing." If you listen closely to the background vocals on that remake, you'll find that they sound very much like the originals from 1988—so much so that I strongly suspect they are the original background vocals, repurposed from the 1988 recordings. In fact, as one of my site visitors first pointed out to me, it sounds as if Neil's own accompanying background vocals from the original are also audible in the remake, especially in the words "domino dancing" at the very end. (Perhaps all the backup vocals were on the same track and couldn't be separated.) If this is indeed the case, then Neil merits a credit for background vocals on The Voice in Fashion's 2012 version, just as they received a background vocals credit on the 1988 PSB version.
The second verse (or, depending on how you look at it, the second half of the first verse) contains the couplet—

A threat of distant thunder, the sky was red
And where you walked you always turned every head

But according to a statement by Neil reported Chris Heath's book Pet Shop Boys, Literally, an earlier version of these lines followed "the sky was red" with "And Che Guevara hung above your bed." Neil had intended this to suggest "that a communist revolution was threatening." But he came to feel "it was corny," so he revised it to what became the final version. He then decided to mention Che Guevara in "Left to My Own Devices" instead.

Mixes/Versions

Officially released

Mixer: Lewis A. Martineé, Rick "Billy Bob" Alonso, and Mike Couzzi
- Album version (7:40)
  - Available on Introspective
  - The same as the "Disco Mix" available in other formats (such as certain 12-inch singles) except for a very slight difference in timing (only a few seconds)
- 7" mix (4:17)
  - Available on Discography

Alternative Version (aka Alternate Version) (4:52)
- Available on the Further Listening disc with the Introspective reissue and, in a slightly abbreviated (4:42) form, on Essential
Base Mix (5:52)

Introspective Version - Edit (4:12)

Available only on a rare 1988 U.S. vinyl promo

Mixer: Pet Shop Boys
- Demo Version (4:47)
  - Available on the Further Listening disc with the Introspective reissue
Mixer: Stuart Price
- Mashup with "Viva la Vida" (5:34)

Available on the Christmas EP

Mixer: Stuart Price
- Pandemonium CD live version in medley with "Se A Vida E," "Discoteca," and "Viva la Vida" (6:00)
- Inner Sanctum CD live version (4:52)

Official but unreleased

Mixer: unknown (possibly Lewis A. Martineé)
- 7" instrumental (3:05)
- 1988 "Spanish Mix" (4:47)

List cross-references

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