The Pop Kids (Pet Shop Boys)

This single is the first off the Pet Shop Boys' new album SUPER,  which reached number 3 in the UK and German charts a few weeks ago. The single failed to chart, but made it to number 1 on the Billboard dance charts.

I'm sure many pop fans identified with this song as soon as they heard it. I've seen several tweets saying things like "it's the story of my life" referring to this Pet Shop Boys single. The song is excellent, with a retro-nineties sort of vibe, and the lyrics take you on a melancholic trip down memory lane. Yes, we were the pop kids, we loved the pop hits and we quoted the best bits.

Hope you like my interpretation. Comments here or on Twitter. 

It's a Sin (Pet Shop Boys)

This song came out when I was 16. I attended a catholic school and suspected I was gay, so the lyrics about how every thought, word and deed were a sin resonated with me in a way that few songs ever have. I wanted to film this in a confessionary at a church, but despite several attempts to sneak into several unnoticed, I haven't managed. So I used a (rather noisy) chapel instead. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa...

Opportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money) (Pet Shop Boys)

80s greed, Thatcherite economics, looks over talent... This song has it all. After the disappointing chart position of "Love Comes Quickly", the follow-up to "West End Girls", Pet Shop Boys came back with this amazing single (an early mix of which had actually been released before "West End Girls"). Of course, nowadays the relative failure of their second single would have got them dropped from their record label, so let's be glad that this single was a hit. It was their last single to miss the top 10 until four years later, when "Being Boring" only reached number 20. 

A straight reading of the lyrics. Let's make loadsa money!