Please is musically simpler than, but lyrically just as rich as, Pet Shop Boys' later work[according to whom?]. The instrumentals are comparable to other techno pop of this period. As with many early PSB albums, the lyrics were considered androgynous. The stories they contain being equally applicable to gay and heterosexual relationships. Tennant, in particular, enjoyed this ambiguity[citation needed] and refused to comment on his own sexuality until he came out in a 1994 interview in Attitude magazine.[9]
The tiny cover photograph enclosed by a sea of white has been seen by some design observers[who?] as a reaction to the traditional album cover. With the new CD cases of the time being necessarily smaller than designs seen on 12" albums, the passport-sized photograph is far removed from standard cover artwork. The actual size of the image is the same size as a 35mm photographic negative.
Although some commentators have remarked[who?] that "Two Divided by Zero" samples a Texas InstrumentsSpeak & Spell toy from the 1980s, this is a myth. Neil Tennant stated in an interview in the BBC Radio documentary About Pet Shop Boys that the sample used on "Two Divided by Zero" was in fact a talking calculator he had bought for his father. The calculator was a Sharp Elsi Mate model EL-640.[citation needed].
Please was re-released on 4 June 2001 (as were most of the duo's studio albums up to that point) as Please/Further Listening 1984–1986. The re-released version was not only digitally remastered but came with a second disc of B-sides and previously unreleased material from around the time of the album's original release. Yet another re-release followed on 9 February 2009, under the title of Please: Remastered. This version contains only the 11 tracks on the original. With the 2009 re-release, the 2001 two-disc re-release was discontinued. On 2 March 2018 a new remastered edition of Further Listening was released, with 2001 edition content.
"Suburbia" was dramatically remixed for the single release.
"Violence" was later re-recorded by the Pet Shop Boys for a charity concert at The Haçienda nightclub in the early 1990s. This version, known as the 'Haçienda version', was released as one of the B-sides to "I Wouldn't Normally Do This Kind of Thing" and was then made available on the B-sides album Alternative and the 2001 Further Listening re-release of the Very album.
The Pet Shop Boys later sampled the Please version of "Love Comes Quickly" for their song "Somebody Else's Business", which appeared on the Disco 3 album.
"Tonight Is Forever" was later covered by Liza Minnelli on the Pet Shop Boys-produced album Results.
Critical reception
Writing in 1986 for Billboard's "Dance Trax" column, Brian Chin described the album as an "amusingly complete compendium of recent dance music styles. It should be a long-running hit for clubs if the remixes keep coming."[10]
"Opportunities" (reprise) is included on the LP version of the album as a hidden track before of the track "Tonight Is Forever", while appearing as a separate track on the CD version.
Track 4 on the Further Listening 1984–1986 bonus disc is a previously unreleased mix, different from the actual 12″ version released in 1985 (dance mix) and which reappeared in 1986 (original dance mix).
Personnel
Credits adapted from the liner notes of Please.[11]
Pet Shop Boys
Chris Lowe – sequencer, synthesizer, keyboards, samples, programmer, drum programmer (track 3, 4, 7–9, 11), piano (track 3), electric piano (track 6), lead vocals (track 13)
^Pennanen, Timo (2006). Sisältää hitin – levyt ja esittäjät Suomen musiikkilistoilla vuodesta 1972 (in Finnish) (1st ed.). Helsinki: Kustannusosakeyhtiö Otava. p. 233. ISBN978-951-1-21053-5.
^"Classifiche". Musica e dischi (in Italian). Retrieved 3 June 2022. Select "Album" in the "Tipo" field, type "Pet Shop Boys" in the "Artista" field and press "cerca".
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