![Array]](https://backingtracksfullcollection.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/1779850244_Array.svg.svg+xml "“You could do a medley of It’s a Sin with The Final Countdown by Europe; in fact, I don’t know why we haven’t done that”: How the Pet Shop Boys took on the church with their most iconic, most “heavy metal” song 18"){kind=small}
After years trying to decide just what kind of act they wanted to be, the Pet Shop Boys eventually settled on a formula that would yield some the 1980s’ most enduring hits.
Following the unsuccessful release of their first single West End Girls in 1984 the track was re-recorded and reissued the following year, rushing straight to number one in the UK chart with similar successes in other territories. Pop fans were besotted by a winning combo of sharp lyricism, clubby energy, and vocalist Neil Tennant’s charismatic presence.
This was just the beginning of what would soon grow into a truly exceptional career, which is still in rude health over 40 years later.
Tennant and keyboardist Chris Lowe were quick to embrace new gear and sampling techniques, utilising the most innovative electronic instruments of the day to create a slew of timeless pop anthems; Rent, What Have I Done to Deserve This?, Domino Dancing, Always on My Mind, the list goes on. All of which would have enormous audience appeal yet imbued with an intelligence that outclassed their chart contemporaries.
A former music journalist, Tennant explored class, sexuality, politics and the intricacies of the human heart.
Their extensive use of the Emulator II (and accompanying library), Fairlight CMI, Linn Drum, with Roland Super Jupiter synth meant that their sounds too, were truly cutting edge for their day. But, the Pet Shop Boys weren’t just twiddling knobs for the fun of it.
They were transmitting the sounds of the most hyper-intense clubs into the living rooms of Thatcher’s Britain.
We could pick any number of PSB’s top tier to examine musically, but their enormous and iconic hit It’s a Sin from 1987 is a particularly fascinating one to look closer at. It draws upon some well-known musical techniques, extending back hundreds of years.
When Neil and Chris started working together, in 1982, Neil made use of some redundancy money to rent a small demo studio in Camden, where the two would work on Fridays and Saturdays.
This was the demo location for all of the songs on their critically-acclaimed first album, Please (1986) and many of the songs for the equally acclaimed second album, Actually (1987).
Tennant would man a four track mixer (presumably some form of Tascam PortaStudio) while Lowe would play synth and electric piano. Tennant would also play the odd bit of acoustic piano when required. But mainly, Neil’s job was to create the toplines, and the lyrics.
Studio owner, Ray Roberts, was very impressed with PSB’s early demos, offering them use of the main studio, in return for a percentage of the publishing on the songs. This seemed like a fair deal – particularly given the duo’s lack of financial stability at the time.
Between the ages of 11 and 18, Neil Tennant had attended a Catholic school. In line with the orthodoxy that was instilled in all students, he was taught that sex (outside of marriage) was a sin.
This particularly draconian teaching resurfaced in Tennant’s head when he heard Lowe play a hymn-like chord progression. Suddenly, the basis of It’s a Sin’s lyrical theme crystallised in his mind. Although its lyric was an honest admittance of the shame he felt for having absconded from his school’s teachings, the music told another story. It was a bombastic rebuttal to the judgmental nature of such prudish restriction.
When I look back upon my life
It’s always with a sense of shame
I’ve always been the one to blame
For everything I long to do
No matter when or where or who
A demo of the first version of the song was recorded with New York’s hi-NRG producer Bobby Orlando, but this version was ultimately shelved. There was a sense that with the right hands and ears on the mix, It’s a Sin had the potential to be something special.
Working alongside producers Julian Mendelsohn and Stephen Hague, Tennant and Lowe transformed the song into a show-stopping pop epic. The re-worked mix was suitably dense, incorporating recordings of ambient sounds captured while visiting the Brompton Oratory, and even included elements of a sung Mass, which was recorded at Westminster Cathedral.
Strangely, they also included samples from an Apollo rocket launch – from the original commentary provided by NASA. Was there something slightly Freudian about that choice, we wonder?
The song sprawled out into a monster of considerable heft, maximising the hi-NRG feel of the original demo whilst daubing it in a dramatic gothic cowl.
“It’s a Sin at its heart is a heavy metal record,” Tennant told the Financial Times. “There is a huge link between hi-NRG music and heavy metal: the urgency, the chords, the slightly histrionic melody. You could do a medley of It’s a Sin with The Final Countdown by Europe; in fact, I don’t know why we haven’t done that.”
Upon release as Actually’s lead single on June 15th 1987, It’s a Sin became the band’s second UK number one after West End Girls. By the end of the year, it’d be the country’s eighth biggest-selling single.
Let’s look under the hood at just how It’s a Sin works.
Set in the keyboardist’s favoured key of C minor, the main verse structure is pretty much entirely dependent upon a musical tool which relates back to the late 1600s…
The application of the circle of fifths is clearly evident in the song. This approach is based on the principle of one chord naturally leading to the next, with the distance between these natural shifts always being a 5th.
You can count an interval of a 5th by simply counting in a step-wise movement, with the notes you start and end on being notes one and five respectively. For example, if you are on a chord of C, count 5 notes upward and you reach the chord of G, and so on.
In the case of It’s a Sin, PSB use a descending circle of 5ths for each verse, so our chords follow a downward cycle with the sequence – Cm, Fm, Bb, Eb, and Ab – before breaking out of the cycle to use Fm and G, before repeating the sequence again.
It’s worth noting that this song is not alone in its adoption of this musical device. You will hear it used in songs as diverse as the jazz standard Fly Me To The Moon and Gloria Gaynor’s disco classic I Will Survive, alongside Basket Case by Green Day and Hey Joe by Jimi Hendrix.
That’s quite a legacy for a theoretical trick first established in the 17th century!
Above and beyond its basic musical employment, the reason we continue to love this sequence is pure physics.
The ‘perfect 5th’ slots beautifully into the naturally occurring set of frequencies, which are described as the harmonic series. When these harmonics and overtones are used in a musical context, there is something very organic and ultimately pleasing, from a listener’s perspective.
When blasted at volume into our ears – as they are in the context of It’s a Sin’s energetic arrangement – that feeling of inevitability is maximised. It’s as if the song were always meant to be.
The chorus section is heralded by the arrival of trumpeting synth brass, which relates back to our home key of Cm, alternating with a chord of Ab/C.
We also hear alternating chords between Fm and G, which are slightly unnatural bedfellows, but add a beautiful sense of discordance, as a reaction to the verse.
Once we reach the bridge section, there is still a heavy reliance upon the key chord of Cm, which is held for two bars, before shifting to a chord of Ebm. This could be regarded as an unrelated chord, thanks to the presence of the note Gb, which is a tritone away from the note C. Its presence here adds angst and fury, before moving to Gm and back to Cm, and a turnaround using a chord of Bb.
Beyond this effective musicology, It’s a Sin’s true power comes from the impact of Tennant’s immaculate and distinctive voice – and, of course, the bravery of his religiously inspired theme.
Contending with this type of repressive, religiously-sanctioned prudishness in a pop context at a time of hyper-tension (and hyper-conservatism) wasn’t something to be done lightly. It was a positively incendiary move.
It’s a Sin’s underlying rejection of imposed restraint had particular resonance due to the ongoing global Aids crisis, where once again the idea of sex – particularly gay sex – being shameful was asserted daily across sections of the British media.
The song’s righteous fire was perfectly visually articulated by the Derek Jarman-directed video, which featured Tennant facing the judgement of a church inquisition. It’d be the first of many collaborations between Jarman and the pair.
However, not everybody was a fan. Several newspapers were critical of the song’s seemingly anti-religious undercurrent, and the very school that had inspired Tennant’s words – St. Cuthbert’s Grammar School – criticised Tennant’s oft-repeated press mentions of the school’s strict orthodoxy as the basis for the song.
“It is very unfortunate that Neil has painted this distorted picture of his school days and the things he was taught,” the school said in a statement, published in the Newcastle Evening Chronicle. “It is very hurtful. It is a long time since he has been here and there have been a lot of changes since then in the Church.”
Years later, in a 2009 interview with The Atlantic. Neil reflected on a song that had grown into, for a certain generation, a more meaningful hymn than anything they’d had to learn in school
“When we brought out It’s a Sin, it was quite interesting, because people took it really seriously,” Neil said. “The song was written in about 15 minutes, and was intended as a camp joke and it wasn’t something I consciously took very seriously. Sometimes I wonder if there was more to it than I thought at the time, but the local parish priest in Newcastle delivered a sermon on it, and reflected on how the Church changed from the promise of a ghastly hell to the message of love.”
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