Two Divided By Zero

Originally, this track was recorded with Bobby Orlando, before Pet Shop Boys signed with Parlophone Records. This version was not released, but the Stephen Hague-produced version which appears on the album is reportedly a fuller version of the original arrangement from 1983.

The electronic voice reciting the name of the song throughout is a talking calculator which Neil bought for his father. Bobby Orlando apparently loved this sound and wanted to base a whole album around it. The combination of the calculator voice and one of Bobby's unused backing tracks resulted in this song, therefore Orlando is credited as co-writer on this track.

The story of the song is the idea of two people not being separated by anything. Says Neil, "in the song, maybe there's trouble at home, so the two people are going to run away. In this instance, to New York. The 'when the postman calls…' part of the song comes from the way, when I was a teenager, people were always having pregnancy scares, most of them totally manufactured, I think, for the sheer value of the drama. The suggestion is that one of them is pregnant...you know that there's no way the people in the song are really going to end up in New York."

Sounds like a fantasy of wanting to get away, as far a way, as there's issue's or an issue at home.

From a sound perspective, it's a great track! I sometimes wish PSB would return to their roots, and include more urban sounds, like they with with West End Girls (street sounds), Suburbia (dog sounds) to name a few.

This is a good song of their firts album and i'm stunned no one commented on that. I´ll try to find the meaning in this ine, it's a bit hard

This is the first track of the first album „Please“ which was released 1986 and it’s one of my favorite tracks of the album. The whole album is full of gay allusions although none of the songs mentions it explicitly.

Whenever I hear this song I imagine a gay teenage couple living in a small village. They have to keep their relation secrect because they are afraid of discrimination. Maybe they still live with their parents. However, somebody finds out their secret, and since it is revealed now, they are not safe there anymore and they are considering to escape to New York and dream of a new life in peace.

The mechanical voices repeats the title of the song over and over again. If you divide any number by zero, mathematically the result is an infinitely large number. This could be a metaphor that if you have nothing left to lose anymore, anything can be possible.