In June 1987, British pop duo the Pet Shop Boys — Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe — released what would be their second number one hit, heralding their “imperial phase” of commercial success: “It’s a Sin”. This insistently grand synth-pop anthem merged disco drama with a lyrical lament that evoked Tennant’s Catholic schooldays, and the draconian view that all sexuality was inherently sinful (“When I look back upon my life/ It’s always with a sense of shame/ I’ve always been the one to blame…”).
“It’s a Sin” was true 1980s pop provocation: a lavishly produced “sorry, not sorry” statement amid conservative times. In 2021, its spirit was summoned again, when it became the title (and a soundtrack highlight) of Russell T Davies’s poignant Channel 4 drama series, portraying a group of young friends during the 1980s Aids crisis. The NME reported that the TV show prompted a “huge streaming surge” for the duo’s classic track.
The song had a long, slow gestation. An early demo, recorded in New York with hi-NRG producer Bobby Orlando in 1984, wasn’t a commercial success, though it still sounds like a thrilling blueprint for the eventual smash hit. An oft-repeated tale that the song was offered to hit factory producers Stock Aitken Waterman turns out to be untrue (“Neither of us can remember it, anyway,” Tennant tells the FT). “It’s a Sin” would ultimately resurface as the lead single from the Pet Shop Boys’ second album, Actually (1987).
By this point, the duo were star signings on UK label Parlophone, widely celebrated for their pop artistry, though they had yet to repeat the international success of their breakthrough chart-topper “West End Girls” (1985). They’d progressed from their early raw electro-influenced sound, and Tennant explains that the aim was to go “really big and mega-Catholic” on the definitive version of the song.
For this, they reunited with innovative producers Stephen Hague and Julian Mendelsohn, and also maxed out the capabilities of the cutting-edge Fairlight synthesiser, assisted by programmer Andy Richards. And so, “It’s a Sin” would embrace exceptionally varied elements, from a Nasa countdown, to the “ambience” sampled at London’s Brompton Oratory, and a choral mass from Westminster Cathedral (coincidentally, in the same key of C minor) while the song thunders towards its close and Tennant recites Latin prayer the Confiteor.
While at Advision Studios, Tennant noticed Derek Jarman’s Baroque arthouse film Caravaggio on the TV; Jarman was duly enlisted to direct a lavish video, depicting Tennant facing a church inquisition, sparking the start of several PSB/Jarman collaborations.
“It’s a Sin” went to number one across Europe, and was a hit in the US and around the globe; in the words of Smash Hits magazine (where Tennant had formerly been a journalist), the Pet Shop Boys were “back! Back! BACK!”. The song also prompted censure and celebration; Tennant’s former school apparently warned pupils that anyone found with a copy of “It’s a Sin” would be suspended. But Salvation Army publication The War Cry praised it for raising modern discussions of sin, while tabloid columnist and broadcaster Jonathan King fixatedly accused the Pet Shop Boys of plagiarising the melody of Cat Stevens’ 1970 song “Wild World”. Stevens, by then known as Yusuf Islam, wrote to Tennant and Lowe in support, and the duo successfully sued King for defamation, donating the settlement to charity.
The song has endured through an array of remixes and reinterpretations. In 2017, German artist Wolfgang Tillmans created an atmospheric sound installation at London’s Tate Tanks, “The 30 tracks that make ‘It’s a Sin’ by Pet Shop Boys”, extending the song into two hours, 34 minutes and 39 seconds. Brandon Flowers, The Killers’ frontman and a lifelong Pet Shop Boys fan, sang “It’s a Sin” with the duo at the 2009 Brit Awards, when Tennant and Lowe collected their Outstanding Contribution to Music trophy. At this year’s Brits, Years & Years vocalist and actor Olly Alexander (star of the TV series It’s a Sin) restyled it as a torch song, in a flamboyant duet with Elton John. Another 2021 cover came from Jonathan Davis of US alt-metallers Korn (on the soundtrack of TV drama Paradise City).
“‘It’s a Sin’, at its heart, is a heavy metal record,” says Tennant. “There is a huge link between hi-NRG music and heavy metal: the urgency, the chords, the slightly histrionic melody. You could do a medley of ‘It’s a Sin’ with ‘The Final Countdown’ by Europe; in fact, I don’t know why we haven’t done that.”
The Pet Shop Boys have been known to segue between “It’s a Sin” and Gloria Gaynor’s disco stormer “I Will Survive” at their concerts, but the track always proves a show-stopper in its purest form.
“‘It’s a Sin’ has actually become our biggest song,” says Tennant. “It’s got a kind of mad ecstatic euphoria about it — and that’s what we always aim for in our music.”
What are your memories of ‘It’s a Sin’? Let us know in the comments section below.
‘The Life of a Song Volume 2: The fascinating stories behind 50 more of the world’s best-loved songs’, edited by David Cheal and Jan Dalley, is published by Brewer’s.
Music credits: Parlophone/EMI; Island; Sumerian Records
Picture credit: Alamy Stock Photo