It’s all about those synth pads, which pulse and swell in the song’s opening seconds, immediately creating a cinematic sense of nostalgia and grandeur. Then Neil Tennant starts his rap-inspired delivery: “Sometimes you’re better off dead/There’s a gun in your hand and it’s pointing at your head.” The song’s lyrics are a blitzkrieg of imagery inspired by T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, political upheaval, world events, and England’s economic divide, but Tennant’s delivery is flawless. (And still flawless, even though he’s in his 70s.)

For all of its catchiness, though, “West End Girls” possesses a certain sense of desperation. Tennant sings, “We’ve got no future/We’ve got no past” as he and fellow Pet Shop Boy Chris Lowe do their best to make sense of a “dead end world” gone increasingly mad.