Once Upon a Time in the Top Spot: Pet Shop Boys, “West End Girls”

30 years ago today, Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe – known collectively as Pet Shop Boys – landed atop the Billboard Hot 100 with a song that had initially been released over two years earlier. Sure, that’s a pretty long time to wait for a #1 hit, but as long as you finally get one, who’s complaining?

The sessions for the original version of “West End Girls” were helmed by famed producer Bobby Orlando in New York, and when the song saw its initial release on Bobcat Records on April 9, 1984, it was in no way what you’d call a huge hit. It was, however, a club hit in Los Angeles and San Francisco as well as it cities in a few other countries, which at least served to put the duo on a few people’s radar.

After the Boys signed to EMI in 1985, however, Stephen Hague took a listen to some of the songs from their sessions with Orlando, and with Hague’s help, Tennant and Lowe revisited them. The end result: the definitive versions of such future hit singles as “Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots of Money),” “It’s a Sin,” “Rent,” and – you guessed it – “West End Girls.” In addition to its US success, the song hit #1 in the UK, Canada, Finland, Norway, and New Zealand, while also hitting the top 5 in Australia, Switzerland, Austria, Sweden, Belgium, Spain, Germany, South Africa, and Ireland.

So, yeah, it took over two years for “West End Girls” to become a hit. But just how big a hit it was, it just might’ve been worth the wait.