Please

Pet Shop Boys | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (October 25, 1990)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Capitol
• ASIN: B000002U9K
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Audio Cassette  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,730 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #3 in Music > Blues > Jump Blues
  • #18 in Music > Blues > Vocal Blues
  • #25 in Music > Pop > Euro Pop

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

In many ways, Please brought Euro-techno into the unsuspecting homes of millions like no other album before. This time, the boys--in this case the Pet Shop Boys--were doin' it for themselves. "I Want a Lover" and "Tonight Is Forever" are songs by boys for boys about boys that snuck past so many because of the genderless (for the most part) objects of affection in the lyrics. Please announces with every synthesizer swell layered over electronic beats, that the boys came to dance and they could complain about their love lives while they were at it. There is also a snide swat or two at the socioeconomic state of things ("Opportunities"), but the Pet Shop Boys' debut will always be most remembered for Neil Tennant's Al Stewart-like vocals in "West End Girls." --Steve Gdula

Product Description

Remastered & repackaged reissue of 1986 album includes 36 page booklet featuring exclusive photos & liner notes along with a 13 track bonus disc packed with rarities & remixes. Slimline double jewelcase housed in a slipcase. 2001 release. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great re-issue!, February 7, 2002

By 

Westley (Stuck in my head) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Please (Audio CD)

I already owned Please on CD, but when it was reissued as a remastered 2-disc set, I didn't hesitate to purchase it again. The remaster of the original disc (disc 1) sounds great and you can hear great details, such as the clicking heels at the beginning of West End Girls.

Disc 2 consists of remixes and b-sides from that era (1984-1986). Highlights include the two songs released on the Disco EP - In the Night and Paninaro, as well as the dance remix of West End Girls. The full version of Opportunities is also included here, which includes the infamous spoken word ending (All the love we had/ and the love that we hide/ Who will bury us/ when we die). Yes, it's pretentious, but typical Pet Shop Boys!

Best of all is the 36 page booklet. It includes numerous pictures from that era, all song lyrics, and comments from the PSB themselves about the CD as a whole as well as each song. You get all kinds of fascinating tidbits, such as Chris' suggestion that Opportunties (Reprise) is the best track on Please! This collection is a bit pricey if you already own the original Please, but it is an essential for any PSB fan.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Foundation for the Pet Shop Boys for the next two decades - and of the "Euro Dance" Sound, September 17, 2006

By 

L.A. Scene (Indian Trail, NC USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Please (Audio CD)

When one looks at the history of musical acts that can be categorized as "Dance Music" or "Disco", there are few acts that have achieved the success and longevity of the Pet Shop Boys. The Pet Shop Boys have been making music for over 20 years - releasing an album usually about every one or two years. In the UK, the Pet Shop Boys have consistently produced Top 10 albums. They haven't had quite the same amount of success on American shores, but nonetheless they have still maintained a solid following. It actually didn't start out like that for the Pet Shop Boys in the U.S. They actually burst on to the music scene in 1986 with a #1 song entitled "West End Girls". They would then follow "West End Girls" up with another hit - "Opportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money)". These two songs would be part of the debut - and most successful album by the Pet Shop Boys "Please".

Just because this album was the most successful album by the Pet Shop Boys doesn't mean that their career went downhill afterwards. In fact, I would subscribe to the theory that "Please" would lay their foundation for the next two decades following its 1986 release. It might be that many may judge the Pet Shop Boys' success in terms of the pop charts and not consider things from where their sweet spot is - the Dance charts. "West End Girls" and "Opportunities" were songs that not only got airplay on the Pop and Dance clubs, but were even songs that got some airplay on some Rock stations. Eventually the Pet Shop Boys would find their niche on the Dance charts - and would never look back. The Pet Shop Boys came along at the end of the Classic Disco album. While acts such as Madonna and Janet Jackson were emerging during this period, the Pet Shop Boys were bringing their own unique style - that being the "Euro Disco" style (i.e. a heavily electronic style in the mold of Giorgio Moroder). In a lot of ways, "Please" made the Pet Shop Boys innovators in what was a new subgenre on the music scene.

The way the songs are ordered - they follow a loose concept. The Pet Shop Boys apparently "escape" to London's West End. They explore the West End, look for ways to make money, explore the suburbs, deal with Violence, and consistently explore love and relationships, and eventually contemplate the future.

"Two Divided by Zero": This song didn't exactly ignite me on fire. I felt it was weak for an opening song. I didn't care for the computer sounding "divided by" repetitions. This song deals with looking for an "escape".

"West End Girls": This is one of those landmark songs. Neil Tennant's does most of the song as a "rap" - and it works perfectly. Tennant is fabulous with singing the chorus. The "rap" provides a narrative. While I'm not a rap, when it's used in an effective manner like in this song - it pays big. Combine this with Euro sounding synthesizers and even some horn and you have a masterpiece. One can make the argument that Madonna's "Jump" on her 2005 "Confessions on a Dance Floor" album samples part of this song.

"Opportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money)": This song probably has a semi-autobiographic feel for Tennant and fellow Pet Shop Boy Chris Lowe. Tennant provides a very believable "pitch" to convince a partner to join him in a business venture. As per the lyrics, it appears that Tennant has had "enough of scheming and messing around with jerks" and is "looking for a partner; someone who gets things fixed". The song almost a nice quasi-orchestral start before segueing into a Euro sounding melody. I like the drum machine in this song.

"Love Comes Quickly": This has a classic "Euro" sound to it. This song took a while to grow on me, but it did. The line from this song "cause when you least expect it; waiting round the corner for you" combined with the song's title tells the whole story.

"Suburbia": This song at times at a bit more of a pop feel. The keyboards are terrific on this one - as well as the "suburban sound effects". Tennant delivers a great commentary on life in the suburbs.

"Opportunities (reprise)": This is a short reprise of "Opportunities". It is all instrumental. I wish this reprise was longer - because this song has you wanting more.

"Tonight is Forever": Not only does this song provide a classic "Euro" sound, but it also has a feel like Giorgio Moroder's music. Very good track - I'm surprised it didn't get more attention on the club scene.

"Violence": This is a nice change of pace song. For this song, the Pet Shop Boys employ a slight Funk influence. They pull off this song perfectly.

"I Want a Lover": This song has a slight classical start to it, then like "Opportunities" it segues into a "Euro Disco" sound. This is another underrated track.

"Later Tonight": This song is sung as slow ballad with some electronic instrumentation. Tennant's vocals are the story on this song as he pulls them off well.

"Why Don't We Live Together?": This song also has a "Euro" feel to it. Tennant uses the "rap" angle again flawlessly on this track. I'm also surprised this song didn't get more airplay in the dance clubs. This song was the perfect "wrap-up" to this album.

Whether one subscribes to the "concept" of what "Please" offers or not, you can also make the argument that each song stands solid on their own. I wish that the liner notes included the lyrics to each of the songs. Overall, I found this to be an outstanding album. If you especially like the "Euro Disco" sound, this would be an album I'd highly recommend.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Please-ing indeed, September 27, 2003

By 

FrKurt Messick "FrKurt Messick" (Bloomington, IN USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Please (Audio CD)

This is the first, and considered by many fans and non-fans, to be the quint-essential Pet Shop Boys album. Anyone familiar with the popular music of the 1980s will know the dominant track on the CD, West End Girls. Still considered their greatest hit, the Pet Shop Boys capitalised on the synthesizer and sample-heavy sound conjured up for this song by producing a slick London-based video that catapulted the PSB into the limelight around the world for the next several years.

The music of the Pet Shop Boys defies easy explanation. The lyrics are witty and urbane, very much a product of the disco and consumer-big-money culture of the 1980s. Songs like Opportunities/Let's Make Lots of Money became a sort of capitalist anthem, spawning two different video versions and countless remixes for the disco environments.

Taking a cue from the popular television of the time, the song Suburbia has a piano overlay that sounds similar to the then massively-popular Eastenders, and the lyrics recount a East End-esque storyline which sparks familiarity with those immersed in the pop culture.

The song Love Comes Quickly highlights both synthesizer effects and masking as well as simple and elegant poetic lyric. No base or screaming lines in this disco, no banal or forced words simply to serve as fronting for a drum-machine-produced rhythm, this song perhaps shows the Pet Shop Boys at their early height in development of words to music (that was finally fully developed in the album Behaviour).

Two other songs of note on this introductory album include the first track, Two Divided By Zero, which has a simple introduction and simplistic development that ends up gradually increasing in sound complexity while the sense of 'what does this song mean?' continues to agitate (for the mathematically inclined, anything divided by zero becomes problematic). Tied together with the lyric in Opportunities: 'I doctored in mathematics/I could've been a don', the nuances are subtle and interesting. The almost triumphant yet existential-based Tonight is Forever generates images of glory and failure, pleading and confidence, subtle and direct, an interesting paradox.

Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe have continued their collaboration (with the great assistance of many others) to produce ever more complex and interesting albums, not all of which have been successful, commercially or artistically. While Please is not their best album, it is certain a classic, and very much the seed from which all the rest of their sound derives (a dialogue lyric on a later album states 'you've both made such a little go a very long way'). Everything on any future album of the Pet Shops Boys is present in some form here. A must have for any collector of the Pet Shop Boys or of 1980s pop culture and music.