Pet Shop Boys Songs - West End Girls Lyrics

Pet Shop Boys - West End Girls

Pet Shop Boys - West End Girls Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Please
Released: 1985

West End Girls Lyrics

West End Girls

Sometimes you're better off dead
There's a gun in your hand
It's pointing at your head
You think you're mad too unstable
Kicking in chairs and knocking down tables
In a restaurant in a West end town
Call the police there's a mad man around
Running down underground
To a dive bar in a West end town

In a West end town a dead end world
The East end boys and West end girls
In a West end town in a dead end world
The East end boys and West end girls
West end girls

Too many shadows whispering voices
Faces on posters too many choices
If when why what how much have you got
Have you got it do you get it
If so how often
Which do you choose
A hard or soft option

In a West end town a dead end world
Meet East end boys and West end girls
In a West end town in a dead end world
The East end boys and West end girls
West end girls

In a West end town a dead end world
Meet East end boys and West end girls
Ooh a West end town in a dead end world
East end boys and West end girls
West end girls

I've said it all before, I'll say it all again
We're all modern men
We've got no future, we've got no past
Here today, built to last
In every city, in every nation
From Lake Geneva to the Finland station

And a West end town, a dead end world
The East End boys and West End girls
Ooh West End town, a dead end world
East End boys, West End Girls
West End girls

You got a heart of glass or a heart of stone
Just you wait till I get you home
All your stopping, stalling and starning
Who do you think you are, Joe Stalin
Sometimes you're better off dead
There's gun in your hand
And it's pointing at your head

In a West end town a dead end world
The East end boys and West end girls
In a West end town in a dead end world
East end boys and West end girls
West end girls

West end girls

Writer/s: TENNANT, NEIL / LOWE, CHRISTOPHER
Publisher: Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

West End Girls

Tennant said in 1000 UK #1 Hits by Jon Kutner and Spencer Leigh, "We arrived in the studio and Bobby O had programmed Michael Jackson's Billie Jean drum pattern. Chris started to play along and I started playing chords. In terms of the lyrics, the inspiration for West End Girls came from The Message by Grandmaster Flash. I remember once staying at my cousin's house in Nottingham and we were watching some kind of gangster film with James Cagney, and just as I was dropping off to sleep, the lines 'sometimes you're better off dead, there's a gun in your hand and it's pointing to your head' came into my head and I thought 'that's quite good' so I went off to find a pen."

Another influence was TS Eliot's poem The Wasteland. Said Tennant: "What I like about it is, it's the different voices, almost a sort of collage. All the different voices and languages coming in and I've always found that very powerful. So on West End Girls it's different voices. The line 'Just you wait till I get you home' is a direct quotation."

Recorded in one take, this originally missed the UK Top 40 in 1984, though it made #1 in Belgium. The song was re-recorded with producer Stephen Hague. As Stephen explained, "I heard the Bobby O version and thought it had potential. I felt it should be slowed down and the story told a little clearer. Neil and Chris agreed once they'd heard it." The above 2 quotes are also from 1000 UK #1 Hits.

This won the 1987 BRIT Award for Best Single. (thanks, Edward Pearce - Ashford, Kent, England, for all above)