This week in 1986, the Pet Shop Boys scored their first US number-one single with the slinky synth-pop hit, West End Girls, also a number one single in the iconic UK duo's UK homeland.
Interestingly, it wasn't the first time they had released the song. West End Girls first arrived in April 1984, and, while it wasn't a huge hit in the Boys' home country, became a club hit, filling dancefloors across Europe and in the US. Buoyed by its success, the band spent a week re-recording the track with producer Stephen Hague, who carefully crafted an urban tapestry of sounds that resonated with the song’s lyrics about class and the pressures of inner-city life, a classic British theme inspired by a T.S. Elliot poem, The Waste Land.
And their hard work with Hague was certainly worth it! The new version was released in October 1985, and by 1986 had reached number one in both the UK and the US. It also won the duo Best Single at the 1987 Brit awards and Best International Hit at the Ivor Novello Awards.
Watch them deliver a triumphant performance of the number one hit, two years in the making, below.
Pet Shop Boys | ‘West End Girls’ [Top Of The Pops, 1986]
And, in 2005, 20 years after its release, West End Girls was awarded Song of The Decade between the years 1985 and 1994 by the British Academy of Composers and Songwriters.
Pet Shop Boys | ‘West End Girls’ [Official Video]
READ MORE: PET SHOP BOYS BIGGEST HITS IN AUSTRALIA
GET PET SHOP BOYS ALBUMS, HERE.
Listen to Pet Shop Boys on Spotify:
Listen to Pet Shop Boys on Apple Music:
