West End Girls
By The Pet Shop Boys
“The pair had met in an electronic music gear store, also called a “HiFi shop” ”
- this was in London, England, in 1981 - where Niel Tennant had been preoccupied with purchasing a synthesizer keyboard. The keyboard, a Korg MS-10, became the spark of a casual discussion between the two musicians, a conversation revealing musical commonalities.
A seemingly serendipitous encounter - although this was an electronic music equipment store after all - this meeting resulted in a long-lasting connection between Tennant, who was the keyboardist, and Chris Lowe, who was the vocalist.
Their tastes in music included disco, electro-pop, and dance. The musical duo would be named the Pet Shop Boys, but they became pure friends before that happened.
Tennant kept the new band and the duo's musical pursuits active yet somewhat in the background. He had an ongoing job as a music industry journalist, and, in 1983, Tennant traveled to New York, New York, to interview world famous and fellow Englishman Sting.
Tennant had a demo on hand - featuring work that He and Lowe had started making for their young band. Upon the opening of the opportunity, Tennant passed that demo on to a notable 'HiNRG' producer Bobby Orlando who had been based in New York.
HI-NRG was a splinter genre off of disco. Marked by a faster tempo, highly reverb-ed vocals, thumping octave baselines, staccato hi-hats, and more. Bobby Orlando had become almost synonymous with the sub-genre itself. In fact, it was Orlando's distinct style that the electronic dance faithful regarded as defining the genre.
Bobby Orlando, or Bobby O, known in music production industry circles, was thought of as a pioneer in electronic music. His signature sound - a prominent beat drum, strong synth basses, new wave-type vocals, pianos, and more - are easily recognizable and have often been emulated, widely thought to represent HI-NRG itself.
After Tennant and Orlando reached an agreement in terms of collaborating, Lowe's and Tennant's band would now have music in the works with the help of a renowned producer. They worked on several songs that Tennant had composed, "West End Girls." The song "West End Girls" is about - and addresses - socioeconomic and class issues within English society.
It is based on a poem by T.J. Elliot called The Waste Land. During the song's bridge, Lowe talks in rhyme - really, he is heard doing a rap - and he does this in an English accent.
“Chris Lowe would later share that Grandmaster Flash’s “The Message” had inspired this verse.”
There ended up being two separate song productions by two different producers. The song was released twice - for legal reasons - the first time being mainly in the United States and the second time was the United Kingdom - where the band was based. The Bobby O-produced "West End Girls" was released in 1984 - mainly in the US and elsewhere, and released only as a twelve-inch single in the UK.
Upon publishing, the song was a significant hit in the US, especially in the club scenes of Los Angeles and San Francisco. It also did well in New York City, and a substantial reception in Belgium and France had been seen.
After much negotiation with Bobby O, Tennant and Lowe were in the clear for re-recording the song for their album. The band approached a certain Stephen Hague for the production that would put "West End Girls" on a Pet Shop Boys album.
This Hague version of "West End Girls" was released in 1985, reaching number 1 the following year on the UK charts. Other markets would follow suit, including the US, and the total worldwide sale would stand at around 1.5 million copies.
While not comparable in popularity to Bobby Orlando, Stephen Hague was no less a giant. He was rooted in different genres of music that Bobby O did not work with. He still was - Stephen Hague - an electronic dance producer. He had a relatively minimalist approach to how he produced in the sub-genre called New Wave - his primary style of music. This was how he would take on "West End Girls."
The musical gear he employed included an Oberheim DMX drum machine - which lays out the foundation for the song. The drums do conduct a pattern change within the song. Hague also includes a digital sampling synthesizer called an E-mu Emulator I and an Emulator II. The sampling synthesizers were produced by E-mu Systems, a Scotts Valley, California-based manufacturer, between 1981 and the late 1990s.
The digital samplers relied on floppy disks to save work. For the bass, Hague relied on a combination of sounds from different electronic instruments and gear, weaving them together to achieve unique - and aesthetic - riffs strategically distributed to various parts of the song. Also heard is a saxophone giving the pop song a contemporary jazz feel. Today, it remains one of Pet Shop Boys' most recognizable hits and is considered one of their signature songs.
