Pet Shop Boys “West End Girls” 1984. EMI 1985 12″ single release, promo copy. “The first version of the song…was released on Columbia Records’ Bobcat Records imprint in April 1984, becoming a club hit in the United States and some European countries. After the duo signed with EMI, the song was re-recorded…for their first studio album, Please. In October 1985, the new version was released, reaching number one in the United Kingdom and the United States in 1986.” A massive smash that reached well into the top 10 in most countries, “West End Girls” also won a ton of awards, including the the British Academy of Composers and Songwriters’ Song of the Decade and in 2020 the Guardian proclaimed it the greatest UK #1 single. It is a good song, with a weirdly detached Gen-X attitude in its vocals and a great hypnotic mid-tempo synthpop dance beat. I remember it being everywhere in the mid-80’s and the London scenes from the video are still etched in my brain.

Our ’85 EMI variant includes the dance mix of “West End Girls” on side A (clocking in at 6:31, about 2 minutes longer than the radio-single version). Side B has the bleep-bloop’d industrial synthpop track “A Man Could Get Arrested” along with an even longer dub version of “West End Girls” (a whopping 9:31). I’ve super-imposed (not that badly) one of the 7″ single’s artwork onto the plain black sleeve our copy came with.