Writers - Tennant/Lowe
First released - 2002
Original album - Release
Producer - Pet Shop Boys
Subsequent albums - (none)
Other releases - (none)
This seems like a surprisingly direct track on an album with so many others that work on multiple levels. Appropriately enough, it opens with sounds that suggest logging on to the Internet and downloading files, but perhaps the most striking thing about it musically is its use of the familiar "West End Girls" chord progression (different instrumentation, different tempo, but the same chords), here backing the understated and at least slightly ironic refrain of "Send me an e-mail that says 'I love you.'" As with the album's opener "Home and Dry," this one concerns lovers who are separated by distant miles. But this time the narrator seems a little less confident of his partner's true feelings. Extolling the virtues of modern digital technology, which makes "time and distance melt away" and facilitates communication among those who are ordinarily very shy, he asks for a simple affirmation: "I'm so insecure—but one thing would make me sure." It's delightful that the Pet Shop Boys could turn the seemingly cold, technological subject of email into such a warm, lovely little song.
Incidentally,
one of my own email correspondents has pointed out a probably unintentional irony
about this song: that in the spring of 2000 a nasty computer virus was going around,
spread via e-mails whose subject line read, "I Love You." Surely the Boys wouldn't
knowingly invite a computer virus! 
Annotations
- Most PSB fans are probably old enough to recognize those strange sounds at the very beginning of this track, which resemble the "electronic" noises one would hear when connecting to a dialup modem back in the early days of accessing the internet. Even by 2002, however, when this song was released, that sort of internet connection had become somewhat passé. Neil himself pointed out in Issue 25 of their fan publication Literally that someone had asked him, "Who uses that kind of connection to the internet nowadays?" When you listen to this opening section at higher volumes, it sounds as though a voice may be mixed into those noises. Neil has said, "It sounds like speech but it isn't speech. It was meant to give you the impression of communication travelling around the world." PSB programmer/engineer Pete Gleadall described it this way: "I think it is some bit of Neil talking that we put through a plug-in… that slow[s] it down/rearranges the order of words, etc. – it mangles speech/audio. There's also some sound fx that we got from my library and layered them up…."
Mixes/Versions
Officially released
- Mixer: Michael Brauer
- Album version (3:55)
- Mixer: unknown
- Demo version (3:52)
- Available for listening at one time as an "exclusive track" on the official PSB website
Official but unreleased
- Mixer: Chris Zippel
- Chris Zippel Radio Version (3:46)
List cross-references
- Johnny Marr's guest work on PSB recordings
- Real places mentioned by name in PSB songs
- The Pet Shop Boys' greatest acts of deconstruction
- PSB songs for which the Boys have acknowledged the influence of specific tracks by other artists
- Studio tracks on which Neil plays guitar
- What it's about: Neil's succinct statements on what a song is "about"
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