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West End Girls

Writers - Tennant/Lowe
First released - 1984
Original album - Please
Producer (album version) - Stephen Hague; (original version) - Bobby Orlando
Subsequent albums - Disco, Discography, PopArt, Concrete, Pandemonium, Ultimate, Inner Sanctum, Smash
Other releases - 1984 single (UK #121); 1985 single (UK #1, US #1, US Dance #1)

The Pet Shop Boys' first (and biggest) true hit single is famous for its unforgettable bass-synthesizer hook, its ambisexual lyrics (not only the "East End boys and West End girls" reference but possibly also the ambiguous line "Which do you choose, a hard or soft option?"), and its "Brit-rap" innovation. The lyrics are at times cryptic and full of relatively obscure references that betray a variety of far-flung inspirations. Neil has stated that he wrote the lyrics as a stream of consciousness with different narrative voices, influenced in this respect by T.S. Eliot's great poem The Waste Land. He has also cited the influence of the early (1982) rap hit "The Message" by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. Not only is there a stylistic influence—"The Message" seminally influenced all rap and "rappish" tracks that followed—but a lyrical one as well, with both tracks graphically depicting urban decay, particularly in their respective first verses. And the ominously suicidal opening lines—

Sometimes you're better off dead
There's a gun in your hand and it's pointing at your head

—were inspired by an old James Cagney gangster film that he watched at his cousin's home one evening in the early 1980s.

Certain lines in "West End Girls" seem to reflect an aimlessness and lack of identity ("We've got no future, we've got no past") commonly felt by members of the Boys' generation in the 1980s. That decade's rampant acquisitiveness ("How much have you got?") is touched upon. Neil also plays around with apparent opposites: rich and poor, upper class and lower class, London's East End and West End. As he noted in a 1986 interview on Japanese television, much of the song concerns the contrast between "bright lights and dull lives," the dream of "escaping the ordinary, everyday life to the kind of fantasy of a city at night, with all the neon lights and stuff." Certain lines ("Have you got it? Do you get it?" among others) also seem to refer to the growth of street drug culture in Thatcherite Britain.

Meanwhile, Neil's well-known interest and background in history (his major in college), particularly that of Russia, is evident in the line "from Lake Geneva to the Finland Station," which refers to the train route taken by Lenin when he was smuggled by the Germans to Russia during the First World War, a pivotal event in the Russian Revolution. Some of the lengthier mixes include additional Russian references, such as the bizarrely comic "Who do you think you are—Joe Stalin?" (Speaking of mixes, "West End Girls" has the distinction of being the PSB song with the greatest number of "official" remixes: at least twenty, maybe more.) What all of these references have to do with the song's primary scenario of social and sexual conflict in London is, however, anybody's guess. Perhaps they're simply meant to evoke images of revolution.

At any rate, "West End Girls" was first recorded with American producer "Bobby O" Orlando and, in that version, became a minor hit in some countries (most successfully in Belgium). It was subsequently re-recorded and released after the Boys moved to EMI, and this second version proved a huge international success, hitting #1 in many nations, including the U.S. and Britain.

Annotations

The West End of London is home to the city's famed theatre district as well as many tourist attractions and popular shopping areas. It's generally the more affluent part of the city, as opposed to the generally poorer East End. The lyrical reference to "a dead-end world" possibly refers to a perceived inability of residents to transcend the socio-economic realities into which they're born. (Note, incidentally, the clever "-end" parallelism: West End, East End, dead end.) As one of my regular site visitors has similarly put it, "any long-term relationship between lower-class boys and upper-class girls would highly likely be doomed.… As a result, the narrator of the song thinks of the West End as a 'dead-end world.'"
The opening line, "Sometimes you're better off dead," apparently had the dual inspiration of a 1930s James Cagney gangster film and the groundbreaking 1982 rap track "The Message" by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. The latter in particular proved a major influence on "West End Girls" in general.
"… to a dive bar" – The fact that "dive bar" isn't capitalized in the "official" lyrics suggests that, at least in a general sense, it could refer to any sort of seedy, rundown bar—a "dive." But there was indeed a specific bar, now defunct, actually named "Dive Bar," located on London's Gerrard Street in the basement of the King's Head Pub in the Chinatown section of Soho. The Boys' official website (in a February 9, 2004 posting) confirms that the famous reference in "West End Girls" was specifically inspired this particular bar, where "in the early 80s Chris and Neil used to drink."
"Which do you choose, a hard or soft option?" – People have been speculating for years about the meaning of these words. One of the most common theories involves a contrast between men ("hard") and women ("soft") as possible sexual partners. According to this theory, then, it alludes to homosexuality vs. heterosexuality. Other interpretations hinge upon the fact that, at the time the Boys wrote this song, the West End—particularly its Soho district—had long been known (at least until it began to undergo revitalization in the 1980s) for its many sex shops and sex shows. This makes even stronger sense when you consider another line only shortly before: "Faces on posters, too many choices." So might the "hard or soft option" allude to a choice between hardcore and softcore pornography?

One of my site visitors, however, has astutely observed that not only this line but also several others that accompany it might very easily refer to a street drug deal:
- "If? When? Why? What?" - Questions that might accompany such a deal.
- "How much have you got?" - That is, how much of the drug(s) in question.
- "Have you got it? Do you get it?" - Again, "it" referring to the drugs.
- "If so, how often?" - In other words, "Can I get drugs from you on a regular basis?"
- "Which do you choose, a hard or soft option?" - Such as heroin (a "hard" option) vs. pot (a "soft" option).
- "How much do you need?" - A rhetorical question that a dealer might ask in response to the previous "How much have you got?"—meaning that he can provide as much of the drug the buyer wants.
This drug-deal interpretation of these lines, reflecting the "dead-end world" being described in the song, certainly makes a great deal of sense.

Another site visitor has pointed out that the choice of the word "option" echoes the stock-market terminology of trading options, which would be apt given the financial environment of the Reagan-Thatcherite 1980s. While options trading is surely not what that line in the song is about, it may nevertheless be playing metaphorically (not to mention ironically) with that very concept.
"You got a heart of glass or a heart of stone?" – This contrast (fragility and/or transparency vs. hardness and/or opaqueness) is likely inspired in part by the title of Blondie's huge 1979 breakthrough hit "Heart of Glass." Of course, "heart of stone" is an age-old cliché in English that refers to any "hard-hearted," uncaring person, although critic Kenneth Partridge has observed that it's also the title of a classic Rolling Stones song (though only a relatively minor hit) from 1965.
"From Lake Geneva to the Finland Station" – A famous but nonetheless very curious line that refers not only to Lenin's journey from exile in Switzerland back to Russia at the start of the Russian Revolution but also to the book To the Finland Station, a 1940 study of the history of European socialism by American literary critic and cultural historian Edmund Wilson. Lake Geneva is, of course, in Switzerland, while the "Finland Station" is a popular name for the railway station in St. Petersburg where trains arriving from Helsinki entered Russia.
With regard to the aforementioned line, it should be noted that following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Neil would instead sing "From Mariupol to Kyiv Station" in the Boys' live performances of the song during their 2022 Dreamworld and Unity Tours. Mariupol and Kyiv are of course major Ukrainian cities, Kyiv being the nation's capital; Mariupol is a port on the Sea of Azov that has been devastated by the Russian attack, lying in territory occupied and "claimed" by Russia.
"Who do you think you are: Joe Stalin?" – The big hit single version of "West End Girls" doesn't include this line, but some other mixes do, including the original, less successful rendition. Joseph Stalin (nicknamed "Joe" or "Uncle Joe" in the West) was the brutal, autocratic dictator of the Soviet Union from the consolidation of his power in the late 1920s until his death in 1953.
A site visitor who hails from Newcastle upon Tyne (just a short distance from where Neil Tennant was born and raised), and who attended Sacred Heart School—the girls' equivalent of St. Cuthbert's School, which Neil attended—tells me that between the two schools was a youth club called The West End. She notes that many people from the Newcastle area interpret "West End Girls" as referring to the girls from the youth club, who, according to my correspondent, "tended to be a bit tough." This is certainly not to suggest this is what Neil had in mind with the lyrics of "West End Girls"—he has in fact made many statements through the years to indicate otherwise—but it does provide a superb illustration of the way in which people routinely bring whole new worlds of meaning to a song based on their own personal backgrounds and experiences.
Over the course of several weeks in May and June 2020, a group of editors and critics from the U.K. newspaper The Guardian published a ranked list of what they considered "The 100 Greatest U.K. No. 1s." As it turns out, the song they placed at the very pinnacle of that list—in other words, their choice of the all-time greatest U.K. #1 hit—was "West End Girls." Now, I take a back seat to no one in terms of PSB fandom, but I have to admit that I, personally, would never have chosen WEG as the all-time greatest U.K. #1. In the "Top Ten"—yes, to be sure. But at the very top? No. I could easily name several songs that I would rank higher, not the least of them certain chart-toppers by The Beatles. But what do I know? After all, I don't even live in the U.K. In response to all this, Neil told The Guardian that he would've chosen "Good Vibrations" by The Beach Boys—another track that I might've picked myself—quickly adding, "It's obviously intensely subjective."
In the wake of "West End Girls" hitting the top of the pop charts, Neil was asked by a journalist how it felt to have a Number One record, to which he notoriously replied, "It feels like vaguely nothing—like having a cup of tea." This, as it turns out, was a calculated bit of image-making insouciance on Neil's part. As he revealed many years later (in Annually 2021), he was actually "excited" (Chris elaborated "terribly excited"), reflected by his writing "'WEST END GIRLS' IS NUMBER ONE!" in all-capitals in his diary on January 6, 1986.
Speaking of Number Ones, on more than one occasion Neil has referred to "West End Girls" as the first-ever #1 rap record in America. But this is a questionable assertion given that Blondie's "Rapture"—at least as much a rap record as "West End Girls"—had hit #1 in the States back in March 1981, a little more than five years before WEG did so in May 1986.
It's not at all unusual for PSB songs to appear in films and on television shows. But it's considerably rarer for them to be featured in videogames. So it's well worth noting that "West End Girls" can be heard in the hugely successful 2013 videogame Grand Theft Auto V (aka GTA 5) on the in-game radio station "Non-Stop Pop FM." The station's DJ even randomly offers two different introductory phrases for the song, both times mentioning the Pet Shop Boys in the process.

Mixes/Versions

Officially released

Mixer: Stephen Hague
- Album version (4:45)
  - Available on Please
- 7" Mix (3:59)
  - Available on Discography
- 10" Mix (7:02)
- 10" Mix, early fade (6:51)
  - Available on the second "corrected" edition of the Brazilian release Party
Mixer: Shep Pettibone
- Disco Mix (9:03)
  - Available on Disco
- Shep Pettibone Mastermix (8:12)
  - Available on the 1986 Dutch various-artists compilation Now Dance
- Shep Pettibone Mastermix (8:37)
  - A slightly longer Pettibone Mastermix (reportedly also with a different intro and perhaps other differences as well), available on the 2021 boxed set Arthur Baker Presents Dance Masters - Shep Pettibone: The Classic 12" Master Mixes
- Dub Mix (aka West End Dub) (9:31)
- Disco Mix Edit (6:34)
  - On the 2009 UMTV CD box set 80s Niteclub
Mixer: Pet Shop Boys and Frank Roszak

The Dance Mix (aka Extended Dance Version)
- There are at least two slightly different versions of this mix
  - The original version on the 12-inch vinyl release of "West End Girls" and on Essential (6:30)
  - A remastered version with a slightly longer fade (mostly silence) on the Further Listening bonus disc with the Please reissue (6:39)

Mixer: Sasha

Sasha Mix (7:47)
- Available on the bonus third disc ("Mix") with the "Special Edition" of PopArt
Sasha Dub (8:24)

Mixer: DJ Hell

DJ Hell Mix (8:39)
DJ Hell Mix Edit (6:58)

Mixer: Mach 2
- West End Sunglasses (7:32)
  - Combines "West End Girls" with the non-PSB track "Sunglasses at Night"
Mixer: Manfred Alois Segieth (as Tess)
- Remix '86 (5:07)
- Remix '86 Edit (3:26)
Mixer: Bobby Orlando
- Original 7" Version (4:12)
- Original Extended Version (7:57)
- Original Extended Edit (aka "Original Bobby Orlando Remix") (5:06)
- Acid House Mix (7:03)
- "James Brown" Mix (6:15)
- Montreal 7" Mix (4:01)
- Montreal 12" Mix (8:24)
- Montreal Dub (6:45)
- Montreal Instrumental Mix (5:33)
Mixer: unknown (possibly Bobby Orlando)

Nouvelle Version (4:10)
- Available on the 1986 Dutch various-artists compilation Smashes in Music - 16 Super Hits. It would later reappear, in much better quality, on the 1999 Belgian various-artists collection Club Wave 2.
Nouvelle Version Edit (aka Bobby O "Single Version" and "Original Bobby Orlando Single Mix") (3:23)

Mixer: Mario Aldini
- West End Megamix (aka ZYX Megamix, aka Part 1 Megamix) (8:04)
  - Combines "West End Girls" with "One More Chance" and "West End Sunglasses"
- Ultimate Mix (5:40)
Mixer: Grum
- Grum Mix (5:32)
- Grum Dub Mix (5:31)
  - The Grum mixes were released as digitial bonus tracks with the 2010 "Together" single to help celebrate the 25th anniversary of the release of "West End Girls" (the "second version") by EMI.
Mixer: Tim Weidner
- Live Concrete rendition (4:58)
- Live rendition on the CD Single (4:58)
  - This is essentially the exact same recording as the version on Concrete except that it has been modified in subtle ways, such as editing out the transition from the previous song, "Indefinite Leave to Remain."
Mixer: Stuart Price
- Pandemonium CD live version (5:14)
- Inner Sanctum CD live version (5:10)
- Medley with "All the Young Dudes" with the Manchester Camerata (4:02)
- Medley with "All the Young Dudes" with the Manchester Camerata - Orchestral Version (3:58)
  - These "Girls/Dudes" medleys are available on various streaming services
Mixer: Pete Gleadall
- "New Lockdown Version" (3:12)
  - Originally performed at the May 31, 2020 Smithsonian Project Pride "Virtual Concert" and subsequently released on the "Cricket Wife" bonus single accompanying Annually 2021.
Mixer: unknown

"2012 Summer Olympics Version" (2:14)
- Available on the various-artists compilation A Symphony of British Music: Music for the Closing Ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games

Mixer: unknown
- Instrumental edit (1:25)
  - Plays as the first part of the intro (followed by a similar instrumental edit of "Opportunities") during the opening menu sequence of the 2023 Smash blu-ray video disc

Official but unreleased

Mixers: unknown
- Abbey Road "New Version/Second Version" (3:58)
Mixer: Peter Schwartz

Nightlife Tour studio arrangement for rehearsal (4:44)

Mixer: Stuart Price

Pandemonium Tour studio arrangement for rehearsal (4:51)

Mixer: Pet Shop Boys
- November 24, 2003 XFM radio session version (3:56)

List cross-references

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