Song · Pet Shop Boys
“Suburbia” by Pet Shop Boys
From the album Please (1986)
“Suburbia” by Pet Shop Boys appears on 7 radio countdowns from 4 stations between 1986 and 1996. It was first released in 1986 on the album Please. Its best result is #1 on the KROQ Top 106.7 Songs of 1986. In the combined RockLists rankings it is the #35 alternative song of 1986, #3,089 alternative song of all time and #441 of the '80s.
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"Suburbia" comes off Please, the 1986 debut from Pet Shop Boys, and it's a bored-teenager nightmare set to a dancefloor pulse. Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe wrote it in 1985 at Terminal Studios in London, Lowe building the music first, his bassline sparked by Madonna's "Into the Groove", with Tennant adding the words after. The spark was Penelope Spheeris's 1983 film Suburbia and its squalid, violent Los Angeles sprawl, with the Brixton riots of 1981 and 1985 in the mix too.
Stephen Hague produced the album take, and the single was re-recorded with Julian Mendelsohn, packed with barking dogs, breaking glass and riot noise. Its UK top-ten showing, their second after "West End Girls", was the hit that, in their view, kept them from being a one-hit wonder.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
RockLists rankings
Alternative & Modern Rock
All Rock Formats
Year-end countdowns
| Year | # | Station | Countdown | of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1986 | 1 | KROQ Los Angeles, CA | KROQ Top 106.7 Songs of 1986 | 107 |
All-time and decade countdowns
| Year | # | Station | Countdown | of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1988 | 410 | Live 105 | Live 105 Top 500 Songs of All-Time (Memorial Day 1988) | 501 |
| 1988 | 198 | WLIR / WDRE | WLIR Top 200 Songs of All-Time (1988) | 200 |
| 1989 | 136 | KROQ | KROQ Flashback 500 (Memorial Day 1989) | 495 |
| 1991 | 491 | CFNY 102.1 The Edge | CFNY Top 1002 Songs of All-Time (1991 Edition) | 1002 |
| 1994 | 350 | Live 105 | Live 105 Revolutionary 500 (July 1994) | 500 |
| 1996 | 329 | KROQ | KROQ Flashback 500 (Memorial Day 1996) | 500 |
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