The first version of the song was produced by Bobby Orlando and was released on Columbia Records' Bobcat Records imprint in April 1984, becoming a club hit in the United States and some European countries. After the duo signed with EMI, the song was re-recorded with producer Stephen Hague for their first studio album, Please. In October 1985, the new version was released, reaching number one in the United Kingdom and the United States in 1986.
In 1987, the song won Best Single at the Brit Awards, and Best International Hit at the Ivor Novello Awards. In 2005, 20 years after its release, the song was awarded Song of The Decade between 1985 and 1994 by the British Academy of Composers and Songwriters. A critic's poll in 2020 by The Guardian selected "West End Girls" as the greatest UK number-one single
Originally released in April 1984, "West End Girls" was released, becoming a club hit in Los Angeles and San Francisco, and a minor dance hit in Belgium and France, but was only available in the United Kingdom as a 12-inch import. In March 1985, after long negotiations, Pet Shop Boys cut their contractual ties with Orlando, and hired manager Tom Watkins, who signed them with EMI.
The song, according to engineer David Jacob, was musically "constructed with only four basic rhythmical patterns throughout", with no 'real' instruments production-wise except for one cymbal. The rhythmic foundations were laid down with an Oberheim DMX drum machine. In addition to that, the synthesizer strings that run throughout the song were created using a blend of string sounds from an E-mu Emulator I and an Emulator II.
The bass part is a composite of different sounds from an Emulator II, a Yamaha DX7 and a Roland Jupiter-6, all of which were connected by MIDI. It had been played by hand to "lend more fluidity to the track", although initially there was a bit of difficulty in keeping the part in time with the drum machine. The song features a cowbell-like sound, which is in fact a combination of a cowbell and an Emulator II choir sound recorded into a Roland MSQ-700 sequencer, and spun in manually at appropriate places in the song.
The trumpet solo in this version was played by Hague on the Emulator. According to Jacob, "it took about six hours to get the trumpet to sound genuine, purposely playing wrong notes to make it sound more 'jazz'".
The traffic noise which introduces the song was recorded by Hague using a Sony Professional Walkman on Gosfield Street outside Advision. By examining the original source tape, the sing-song voice heard at the beginning was discovered to be saying "Get on the mic-ro-ph-one". In addition to the rap verses and choruses sung by Tennant (each using different microphones—one for verse and another for choruses), singer Helena Springs was brought in to sing background vocals—parts of these were sampled into the Emulator to be used wherever wanted in the track.
They re-released the song in late 1985, topping the charts in both the UK and the US. Since then "West End Girls" has been generally well received by music critics, called the song "hypnotic", adding that "it's not only a classic dance single, it's a classic pop single, a sensational pop single.
The accompanying music video for "West End Girls" was directed by Andy Morahan and Eric Watson, and consists of shots of the duo around London. At the beginning of the video, noises from the city can be heard, a camera passes Lowe on the street, and focuses on mannequins in a shop window. Then appears a sequence of quick cuts with shots of the city's different sub-cultures; the video freezes and cuts to Tennant and Lowe, who walk through an empty Wentworth Street in Petticoat Lane Market. They stand in front of a red garage door; Tennant is in front dressed with a long coat, white shirt and dark necktie, directly addressing the camera, with Lowe standing behind him with a blank expression. Lowe is filmed in double-exposure and appears almost ghostlike. In other shots, Tennant power-walks imperiously while Lowe casually follows behind. While Tennant delivers the lyrics and chorus directly at the viewer, Lowe appears at times uninterested in the proceedings or preoccupied with other goings-on around them.
Then the video shows various shots at Waterloo Station, as the chorus starts. In slow motion, the camera pans across the WHSmith shop on the station concourse as the duo walk past. It cuts to a brief shot of a No. 42 red double-decker bus, showing the destination as Aldgate, also advertising the stage-show Evita, then black and white shots of the Tower Bridge, Westminster and the Westminster Palace Clock Tower from the sky. The duo poses on the South Bank of the River Thames in a pastiche of a postcard image, with the Houses of Parliament as a background.
The camera shows shots of young women, and passes through arcades and cinemas in Leicester Square. The camera now passes South Africa House showing protestors in the Non-Stop Picket, an anti-apartheid vigil. The video cuts to a closeup of Tennant singing the chorus, with a purple neon sign eerily passing across his face. At the end the camera passes again through Leicester Square, where people queue to see Fletch and Desperately Seeking Susan. The video was nominated for Best New Artist in a Video at the 1986 MTV Video Music Awards, but lost to A-ha's "Take On Me".
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