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Opportunities
(Let's Make Lots of Money)

Writers - Tennant/Lowe
First released - 1985
Original album - Please
Producer - Stephen Hague, J.J. Jeczalik, Nicholas Froome
Subsequent albums - Disco, Discography, PopArt, Ultimate, Inner Sanctum, Smash
Other releases - 1985 single (UK #116), 1986 single (UK #11, US #10, US Dance #3)

A "cynical joke song" (as Neil has described it) that many people misunderstood and forever caused them to despise the Pet Shop Boys or at least view them with intense suspicion. Much of the problem lies in many listeners' inability to distinguish between the singer of a song and the lyrical persona that he or she has adopted while singing it. But the narrator of "Opportunities" is hardly Neil himself. (For one thing, he never "doctored in mathematics.") In fact, Neil has referred to the narrator as "a pathetic character" who, in the end, isn't at all likely to make "lots of money."

It seems that the Boys are satirizing the mercenary attitudes that they suspect (with good reason) that many performers have in their pursuit of success as pop stars. It can also be viewed as a more general commentary on the prevailing "greed is good" mentality (not to mention outright larceny: "If you have the inclination, I've got the crime") of the Thatcherite/Reaganite era, of which the somewhat socialistically inclined Boys undoubtedly disapproved. It was a message that much of the public—particularly in the United States—didn't want to hear, enamored as they are of the great mythology that rock music is (or should be) somehow above such pecuniary concerns. Musicians who are "only in it for the money" are thus viewed as fakes and traitors. By laying bare this very sentiment, in however a satirical fashion, Tennant and Lowe alienated rock fans who didn't want to hear it and thus turned it back on them. In short, the messengers were condemned on account of the message. Fortunately, this probably didn't matter much to Neil and Chris, who have never considered themselves "rock stars" and detest the mythologizing impulses that made so many listeners turn against them in the first place.

At it happens, "Opportunities" was the first Pet Shop Boys single on Parlophone/EMI, and although it gained little attention the first time around, it became a major hit when it was re-released in the wake of the tremendous international success of the second version of "West End Girls." Interestingly, it's the only PSB single that turned out to be a bigger hit in the U.S. than in the U.K. On Please it appears in two forms: the song proper (which is somewhat different from the single version) and later a brief "Reprise."

Another especially interesting note: although Neil writes nearly all of the Pet Shop Boys' lyrics, he confessed to interviewer Jude Rogers in the January 2011 issue of Word magazine that it was Chris who came up with the unforgettable line "I've got the brains, you've got the looks, let's make lots of money." In fact, Chris specifically asked Neil to write song lyrics based around those words.

Annotations

Neil has stated that the lyrics for this song were partly inspired by the relationship between the characters that Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight portrayed in the 1969 film Midnight Cowboy.
The Swiss singer Colette Meury is reportedly an uncredited backup singer on "Opportunities." Her voice can apparently be heard in the background "oos" and "ahs," and she also appears prominently in the "Singin' a song bap m dee bap" bit that appears between 2:18 and 2:40 of the single, though precisely where depends on the particular single version. She was a friend of co-producer J.J. Jaczalik and would sometimes do backup vocals for his sessions. She remembers that Chris's keyboard had "stickers" on it, and was reprimanded at one point by Neil for singing "Let's make loads of money" rather than "lots of money."
"I studied at the Sorbonne" – The Sorbonne refers to the prestigious University of Paris, a nickname for the institution that comes from the name of one of its oldest, most famous buildings. It might also refer specificallly to the Collège de Sorbonne, a theological college that's part of the University of Paris, or one of several other branches of the University that also include "Sorbonne" in their titles. Of course, Neil did not study there, which underscores the fact that he himself is not the "narrator" of this song.
"I could have been a don" – A don is a teacher at a British college or university, particularly one of the older, more prestigious institutions like Cambridge or Oxford. It derives from an old term of respect for a priest (at one time it wasn't at all unusual for college instructors also to be clergymen), which itself derives from similar honorifics given to priests and nobles in various Latin cultures (Spain, Italy, and Portugal).
It has been suggested by some fans that the line "You know it makes sense" is a pun by virtue of "sense" being a homophone with "cents": "You know it makes cents." I'm not aware of Neil (or Chris, for that matter) ever acknowledging any such pun, so it's possibly unintentional. But, intentional or not, it still works as a pun.
The final lines of the song, at least in some versions (and as quoted in the "Lyrics" section of the official PSB website), consist of the quatrain—

All the love that we had
And the love that we hide
Who will bury us
When we die?

One of my site visitors has observed that these words could suggest that the song's narrator may be in love with the prospective business partner to whom he's been speaking throughout. Perhaps. But I've always viewed them simply as a rather poetic acknowledgment—possibly coming more as a commentary by Neil himself, stepping "out of character," than as an expression of the feelings of the character he's been portraying up to that point—that any success we might achieve in life is ultimately of little value if we don't have loved ones with whom to share it. In short, it undercuts the song's spoken message of mercenary opportunism, thereby serving to intensify its unspoken but obvious critique of that very sentiment. Then again, this expression is by no means contradictory to my site visitor's theory. They both could be accurate.
In February 2021, roughly 35 years after its release, "Opportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money)" went all the way up to #1 on the Billboard Electronic/Dance Digital Song Sales chart, which tracks paid downloads and streaming. This remarkable resurgence was triggered by the use of the PSB recording in a commercial for Allstate Insurance that aired during the post-game portion of the Super Bowl LV broadcast a few weeks prior.

Mixes/Versions

Officially released

Mixer: Stephen Hague
- Album version (3:44)
  - Available on Please
- Album version - 2018 remaster (3:44)
  - There's a subtle difference between the original 1986 Please album version and the 2018 re-release version remastered by Tim Young. At about the 2:23 mark, there's a four-beat bar preceding the instrumental bridge, with a drum fill on the fourth beat. In the 1986 original, keyboard chords are played on all four beats, whereas in the 2018 remaster the fourth keyboard chord is missing, thus leaving the drum fill "naked."
- Second 7" version (3:36)
  - Available on Discography
- "Opportunities (reprise)" (0:32)
  - A separate track on Please
Mixer: The Latin Rascals and Ron Dean Miller
- Version Latina (5:34)
  - Available on Disco
- Version Latina - Edit (3:45)
  - Officially released only on a rare Australian 7" promo
- Dub for Money (4:49)
Mixer: J.J. Jeczalik and Nicholas Froome
- Original 7" version (aka Short Version)
  - Available on the original vinyl single (3:45)
  - Available on Essential (3:47)
    - There are extremely subtle differences between these two appearances of this mix. On the original vinyl single, the piano at the end fades out a little more quickly than it does on Essential, resulting in a slightly shorter running time. Further, some drum beats in the middle of the song (around 2:05-2:10, depending on the version) sound subtly different in these two appearances of this mix.
- Dance Mix (aka Original Dance Mix, aka Double Your Money Mix) (6:45)
- Full Length Original 7" Mix (4:36)
  - Available on the Further Listening bonus disc with the Please reissue
Mixer: J.J. Jeczalik, Nicholas Froome, and Pet Shop Boys
- Original 12" Mix (7:00)
  - Available on the Further Listening bonus disc with the Please reissue
Mixer: unknown
- Matrix Mix (aka Different Mix) (3:21)
  - The mix of "Opportunities" that appears on Now That's What I Call Music 7 (U.K.) has sometimes been identified as a unique mix, different from this, but as best I (and various others) can tell, the two are essentially identical.
- Whistle Test Mix (3:34)
- Demo - 1984 (5:08)
Mixer: Shep Pettibone
- Shep Pettibone Mastermix (7:21)
- Reprise (4:27)
  - Available on certain "Opportunities" 12-inch singles
  - Not to be confused with the brief "Opportunities (reprise)" track on Please
Mixer: Stuart Price
- Inner Sanctum CD live version (2:51)
Mixer: unknown
- Instrumental edit (1:16)
  - Plays as the second part of the intro (preceded by a similar instrumental edit of "West End Girls ") during the opening menu sequence of the 2023 Smash blu-ray video disc

Official but unreleased

Mixer: unknown
- Early 1980s demo (4:50)
- Bobby "O" demo (5:04)
- Demo (5:18)
- In addition, at least four other early demo-type versions of "Opportunities" have come to light on bootleg releases.
Mixer: Pet Shop Boys
- November 24, 2003 XFM radio session version (4:06)
- October 9, 2013 KCRW radio session version (3:19)
  - Part of a medley, so timing is approximate
Mixer: Steve Lipson
- Tetris film closing credits remix (2:34)
  - Blends at the beginning and end with other music, so timing is approximate
  - Unique and different from the version that appears on the Tetris Original Motion Picture Soundtrack album, which is the 2001 remaster of the previously released Full Length Original 7" Mix, noted above

List cross-references

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