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''The capitalization of song titles in this article may be disputed. Please see the Pet Shop Boys#Capitalization of song titles before making changes.

"Opportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money)" is a song by UK synthpop duo Pet Shop Boys, released as a single in 1985 and then in 1986, gaining greater popularity in both the UK and U.S. with its second release.

Written as a satire of Thatcherism and its embodiment in conspicuous consumption and yuppies in the United Kingdom during the 1980s, the song's indirect attack on its subject matter has come to exemplify the Pet Shop Boys as ironists in their songwriting.

Overview

History

The song was written during the Pet Shop Boys' formative years, in 1983; the main lyrical concept came when, in the studio, Chris Lowe asked Neil Tennant to make up a lyric based around the line "Let's make lots of money". Tennant has said that he was somewhat inspired by the relationship between the characters of Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight in the 1969 film Midnight Cowboy.

The first version of the song, recorded with the duo's first producer, Bobby Orlando, never saw release; upon signing with record label Parlophone, they re-recorded the song with J.J. Jecazlik (of The Art of Noise) and Nicholas Fromme.

The original single release charted lowly at number 116 in the UK, to be exceedingly outdone by the number-one spectacle of the second release of "West End Girls" in multiple countries. With producer Stephen Hague still on board from that release, a new single version and a version for the duo's debut album, Please, were prepared. The second release of "Opportunities" following the album's release fared better in the charts, and still receives radio airplay to date as one of the definitive Pet Shop Boys songs.

Please also included a brief, cacophonic track entitled "Opportunities (Reprise)", which was the original middle section to the song proper before it was edited out.

Lyrics

The lyrics are sung by a man, self-declared as being intellectual and educated, to another, whom he identifies as having "looks" and "brawn", bidding the other to join him in a scheme to "make lots of money".

Tennant has made it clear, however, that the schemes are doomed to failure: for example, that the protagonist's claimed accreditations, a PhD in mathematics from the Sorbonne and knowledge of computer programming, are conceited. The punchline of the "joke" of the song, he says, is that "the people in it are not going to make any money".

The meaning of the lyrics is taken at face value by some listeners, and this subsequent interpretation of the song as a materialistic anthem receives mixed reactions. The satirical interpretation, on the other hand, has cemented the Pet Shop Boys' reputation as "ironists" to many critics, to the chagrin of the band as the result is often the downplaying of their more sincere songs.

A notable change between the original and re-recorded versions of "Opportunities" is the omission of the spoken outro "All the love that we had / And the love that we hide / Who will bury us / When we die?" Accoring to Tennant, the lyrics were removed from the second version of the song as the duo feared the passage would be construed as "too pretentious". The first two lines of the outro, however, are sung within the lyrics of "Why don't we live together?" from the Please album. The original single version of "Opportunities" was unavailable on compact disc until the U.S.-only Essentials compilation album in 1998.

Release

12-inch remixes for the 1985 release were produced by Ron Dean Miller of Nuance, while those for the 1986 release were produced by noted 1980s producer Shep Pettibone. Some of Miller's overdubs went on to be incorporated into the 1986 single version.

The B-side of the 1985 release, "In the Night", is about the subculture known as the Zazous that appeared in France during the German occupation of France in World War II; concerned with fashion and music, and allied with neither the Nazis and Vichy France nor the French Resistance, they were distrusted by both sides. Tennant, having read about the movement in a book by David Pryce-Jones, asks, in the song, the question of whether this apathy essentially amounted to collaborationism.Heath, Chris (2001). "In the Night". In Please / Further Listening 1984-1986 liner notes. London: Pet Shop Boys Partnership.

An instrumental version of "In the Night" became the opening theme music of the BBC fashion program The Clothes Show when it first aired in 1986. This continued for a decade until 1995 saw a re-recording of the song, "In the Night '95", which thereafter became the new opening theme. The music from "In the Night" is also used in the The Bloodhound Gang's hit 1999/2000 song The Bad Touch.

Music videos

First version

The music video for the first single release was directed by soon-to-be perennial Pet Shop Boys photographer Eric Watson and 1980s staple music video director Andy Morahan. It depicts Lowe in an underground parking garage; a car pulls up to him and stops, whereupon Tennant materializes in front of it, dressed in a hat, glasses, and a suit by British fashion designer Stephen Linard, and standing inside a rectangular hole in the ground while singing the song. The video ends with Tennant disintegrating into dust and the car driving away.

Watson was partly inspired by the images of preachers in Wise Blood, the film adaptation of the Flannery O'Connor novel of the same title, in designing Tennant's appearance.

Second version

For the re-release, the prestigious Polish director Zbigniew Rybczyński was recruited. In the video, Tennant is again dressed in a suit and hat, while Lowe wears the hard hat, jeans, soiled shirt, and work gloves of a construction worker, depicting the two roles spoken of in the lyrics. The camera pans over a background of city skylines and clouds rendered in neon lines as Tennant and Lowe appear duplicated repeatedly, passing to each other symbols of the different statuses they represent — including a top hat, a trophy, a brick, and a sledgehammer.

In culture

"Opportunities" is the opening theme to the WB Television Network reality show Beauty and the Geek, which first aired in 2005; the show literally pairs up people with "brains" (intellectual men) alongside those with "looks" (attractive women) in a competition to "make lots of money".

Notes and references

1985 singles | 1986 singles | Pet Shop Boys songs