PET SHOP BOYS LYRICS

"Opportunities (Let's Make Lots Of Money)"

I've got the brains, you've got the looks

Let's make lots of money

You've got the brawn, I've got the brains

Let's make lots of -

I've had enough of scheming and messing around with jerks

My car is parked outside, I'm afraid it doesn't work

I'm looking for a partner, someone who gets things fixed

Ask yourself this question: Do you want to be rich?

I've got the brains, you've got the looks

Let's make lots of money

You've got the brawn, I've got the brains

Let's make lots of money

You can tell I'm educated, I studied at the Sorbonne

Doctored in mathematics, I could have been a don

(Aahhhhh - Di du da di da bu di ba)

You can see I'm single-minded, I know what I could be

How'd you feel about it, come and take a walk with me?

I'm looking for a partner, regardless of expense

Think about it seriously, you know, it makes sense

Releases and Versions Edit

The 1985 release was issued in 7" and 12" formats around the world. Standard single and extended versions of the Jeczalik/Froome mix appeared coupled with the b-side In The Night (many versions of the 12" listed the extended version of the b-side, but were in fact the shorter version). Also, limited edition vinyl was issued with remixes by Ron Dean Miller of the Latin Rascals.

In 1986, the re-recorded album version of the track was remixed by Shep Pettibone and released as the fourth single from Please. Later on that year, the Version Latina mix by Ron Dean Miller was included on Disco: The Remix Album.

Design and Packaging Edit

The 1985 single artwork was compiled by XL design and featured black and white photos of Neil and Chris taken by Eric Watson. Music credits were written vertically in white on a black stripe at the side of the cover facings.

In 1986, the cover was a sparse typographical design by Mark Farrow and the band themselves. No photos were included, simply the title and artist in gold and white on a field of grey. Some countries' releases altered the grey inking to black.

Videos Edit

The first video for this track was done for the 1985 version. It featured Neil singing the song half-emerged from what appears to be a sewer access point in an underground parking garage. At the end, he disintegrates into a pile of dust, and Chris drives away in a limousine.

Version two in 1986 was directed by Zbigniew Rbczinski (known for his direction of Art Of Noise's 'Close (To The Edit)' video), and featured some very clever video editing, chromakey and layering effects with the Boys passing off various items to one another.

Lyrics Edit

The idea to sing "Let's make lots of money" was Chris': "This was in the Eighties, during Thatcherism, and suddenly there had been this huge philosophical shift in the country where the idea of making money was a good thing. People started talking about yuppies and buying Filofaxes and all that kind of stuff, and this was meant to be a sort of satire on that. It's a classic Chris idea: let's say the unsayable."

"It was meant to be an anti-rock-group song," Neil said at the time, "singing about the things you're not supposed to sing about. We always thought the song was sad, because it was about two losers." They go on to liken the song to the movie "Midnight Cowboy", where Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight pair up as a brains-and-brawn hustler combination. "It was what you would have called, at the time, a wind-up. You wouldn't have said 'ironic' at the time, you'd have said, 'it's a wind-up'. It was meant to be provocative."

Production and Recording Edit

The song was originally written in 1983, and the following year they recorded it with Bobby Orlando. Indeed, the song was written to sound like Orlando's music, as the band were fans of him at the time. Although Neil has stated he may prefer the Bobby O version of the track, it was never released.

After signing with Parlophone, the band decided to make this song their first single as a lead-up to an album. The song was re-recorded with J. J. Jeczalic of the Art Of Noise and Nicholas Froome. According to Neil, the original 1985 single took three weeks to record, and cost £40,000.

For the Please album, the vocals were rerecorded, and some of the tracks were reprogrammed by Stephen Hague. The reprise that is track six off of Please was taken from the original recording of 1985, which appears in some early cuts of the mix (later released on re-issues of Please ). The party heard in the background was recorded at Sarm East Studios in London.

The 'Please' production was subsequently re-released as a single in 1986 and did slightly better on the charts than its predecessor.