West End Girls
"West End Girls" is a song by the English synth-pop duo Pet Shop Boys. Written by Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe, the song was released twice as a single. The lyric, concerned with class and the pressures of inner-city life in London, is inspired partly by T. S. Eliot's poem The Waste Land (1922). The track was generally well received by contemporary music critics and has been frequently cited as a highlight in the duo's career.
The first version of the song was produced by Bobby Orlando and 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 with producer Stephen Hague for their first studio album, Please (1986). In October 1985, the new version was released, reaching number one in the United Kingdom and the United States in 1986.
In 1987, the song won Best Single at the Brit Awards and Best International Hit at the Ivor Novello Awards. In 2005, 20 years after its release, it was awarded Song of The Decade between 1985 and 1994 by the British Academy of Composers and Songwriters. A critic's poll in 2020 by The Guardian selected "West End Girls" as the greatest UK number-one single. Despite not being considered a hip-hop track, it is one of the very first songs heavily influenced by rap or spoken-word to top the charts on both the UK singles chart and the US Billboard Hot 100. Tennant’s style is cited as "one of premature white rapping examples".
The song was performed by the Pet Shop Boys at the 2012 Summer Olympics closing ceremony.
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