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."
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."