Pet Shop Boys

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Lore & Background

Pet Shop Boys signed with Parlophone, a subsidiary of EMI Records, in March 1985. By that time, Chris Lowe and Neil Tennant had been writing songs together for over three years. Their music was influenced by Italian disco, the emerging American hip-hop scene, and American producer Bobby Orlando's lo-fi electronic dance music. The duo had recorded some of their material with Orlando, including "West End Girls", which had been released as an unsuccessful single in 1984. Lyrically, the songs were inspired by their life in London at the time, with lyricist Tennant assuming different characters and occasionally writing satirical songs, such as "Opportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money)". For their debut album, Pet Shop Boys wanted to work with Stephen Hague, the producer of Malcolm McLaren's "Madame Butterfly" and The World's Famous Supreme Team's "Hey DJ". Their record company initially wanted them to use Stock Aitken Waterman, but Pet Shop Boys were allowed to record "West End Girls" with Hague as a trial. Hague suggested slowing the song down and making it moodier, with more focus on the story and a filmic intro of street sounds. "West End Girls" was released in October, and the single climbed to the top of charts as they went on to record the rest of the album. *Please* was made in 10 weeks, between November 1985 and January 1986, at Advision Studios in London. They sequenced the songs to form a loose storyline: "They run away in the first song ["Two Divided by Zero"], they arrive in the city ("West End Girls"), they want to make money ("Opportunities"), they fall in love ("Love Comes Quickly"), move to suburbia ("Suburbia"), go out clubbing ("Tonight Is Forever"), there's violence in the city ("Violence") and casual sex ("I Want a Lover"), someone tries to pick up a boy ("Later Tonight")". The sequence ends with "Why Don't We Live Together?"

Reader's Guide

*Please* was released on 24 March 1986 and debuted at number three on the UK Albums Chart. In the United States, *Please* is Pet Shop Boys' highest charting album, reaching number seven on the Billboard 200, and it is their only record to be certified platinum by the RIAA with over one million sales. The album received a mix of reviews at the time of its release. In March 1986, *Smash Hits* reviewer Chris Heath gave the album a 9 out of 10 rating describing the content as "ten thoroughly catchy songs". Writing in 1986 for Billboard's "Dance Trax" column, Brian Chin described the album as an "amusingly complete compendium of recent dance music styles. It should be a long-running hit for clubs if the remixes keep coming." In *The Village Voice*, Robert Christgau highlighted the catchy tunes and "yearningly cynical lyrics" but stated that his favourite moments on the album are provided by sound effects–"sirens and breaking glass so skillfully integrated into the synthesized textures that at first I didn't notice they were there." Eleanor Levy of *Record Mirror* gave *Please* 3.5 out of 5 stars in her review: "Clean and crisp, these Pet Shop Boys—creating layer upon glossy layer of traditional early Eighties electronic trickery… All fairly conventionally unconventional, really. A vague veneer of experimentation covering comfortable pop sounds". She added, "This is also a very accomplished debut album." Retrospectively, several reviewers have acknowledged the strength of the album as a starting point for the Pet Shop Boys' career. "The debut Pet Shop Boys album does what all good debut albums should do and established the aesthetic of the band which would endure right to the present day," according to Martyn Young in a 2020 *Clash* feature. The AllMusic review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine called *Please* "A collection of immaculately crafted and seamlessly produced synthesized dance-pop" that "sketches out the basic elements of the duo's sound." In a 2009 review for the BBC, Ian Wade wrote: "*Please* really hasn't dated at all and should be the textbook example of how brilliant a pop debut could be."

Did You Know?

• The album title was chosen so that people could go into a record shop and say "Can I have the Pet Shop Boys album, please?"
• "Two Divided by Zero" is the only Pet Shop Boys song, excluding cover versions, for which Chris Lowe does not share a songwriting credit; it was co-written by Tennant and Bobby Orlando.
• Stephen Hague shares a songwriting credit with the duo on "Love Comes Quickly" for coming up with the chord changes of the middle eight.
• Chris Lowe played trombone on "I Want a Lover".
• The album version of "Suburbia" is a polished version of the Pet Shop Boys' demo, completed as the last song due to time constraints.