Go West

The Village People released Go West in June 1979 on Casablanca. It was written by Jacques Morali, Henri Belolo and Victor Willis, and Morali produced it. In 1992 Derek Jarman asked Pet Shop Boys to perform at an AIDS charity event at the Haçienda nightclub in Manchester, and Lowe chose the song. Tennant could not remember the lyrics on the night, and the duo decided to record it. Lowe said he had thought of it as a song about an idealistic gay utopia, and that he knew the way Neil would sing it would make it sound hopeless. A first recording made for release in 1992 was never used.

The released version builds the chord progression into Pachelbel's Canon and opens with a new introduction that Lowe said sounds surprisingly like the former Soviet anthem. Richard Niles arranged the brass and an all-male Broadway choir, which Tennant said was inspired by There Is Nothing Like a Dame from South Pacific. The choir was recorded at The Power Station in New York, and Brothers in Rhythm added production. Tennant and Lowe wrote a new coda and bridge. Stephen Hague and Mark Stent mixed it.

Release

It came out on 6 September 1993 as the second single from Very, with the B-side Shameless. It reached number two in Britain and number one in Finland, Germany, Iceland and Ireland. Howard Greenhalgh directed the computer-generated video, which pairs a red Statue of Liberty with a grey city of Soviet imagery and footage of the duo in Red Square. It was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Short Form Music Video in 1995 and lost to the Rolling Stones' Love Is Strong.

Larry Flick of Billboard wrote that the cover swaps the male-bonding vibe of the original for a wistful demeanor with a pensive subtext of loss. Caroline Sullivan of the Guardian said it made the Village People original seem flagrantly heterosexual, and Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic called it bizarrely moving. Football supporters took up the tune, including at Arsenal, the club Lowe supports, and Borussia Dortmund began a German tradition of matchday versions in 1993.

Live

At the Equality Show at the London Palladium on 24 October 1993, a benefit for Stonewall's campaign on the age of consent, the duo closed their four-song set with Go West, joined by the London Gay Men's Choir. The album track runs 5:01 and is followed by two minutes of silence and a short hidden track, Postscript.