I’ve got the brains
You’ve got the looks
Let’s make lots of money
You’ve got the brawn
I’ve got the brains
Let's make lots of…

I’ve had enough of scheming
and messing around with jerks
My car is parked outside
I’m afraid it doesn’t work
I’m looking for a partner
someone who gets things fixed
Ask yourself this question
Do you want to be rich?

I’ve got the brains
You’ve got the looks
Let’s make lots of money
You’ve got the brawn
I’ve got the brains
Let’s make lots of money

You can tell I’m educated
I studied at the Sorbonne
Doctored in mathematics
I could have been a don
I can program a computer
choose the perfect time
If you’ve got the inclination
I have got the crime

Oh, there’s a lot of opportunities
if you know when to take them
You know there’s a lot of opportunities
if there aren’t, you can make them
(Make or break them)

I’ve got the brains
You’ve got the looks
Let’s make lots of money
Let’s make lots of…
money

You can see I’m single-minded
I know what I could be
How’d you feel about it?
Come and take a walk with me
I’m looking for a partner
regardless of expense
Think about it seriously
You know it makes sense

Let’s (Got the brains)
make (Got the looks)
Let’s make lots of money (Oohh money)
(Let’s) You've got the brawn
(make) I’ve got the brains
Let’s make lots of money (Oohh money)
I’ve got the brains (Got the brains)
You’ve got the looks (Got the looks)
Let’s make lots of money (Oohh money)
Money

All the love that we had
and the love that we hide
Who will bury us
when we die?

Writers - Tennant/Lowe
First released -
Original album - Please
Producer - Stephen Hague, J.J. Jeczalik, Nicholas Froome
Subsequent albums - Disco, Discography, PopArt, Ultimate, Inner Sanctum
Other releases - single (UK #), single (UK #11, US #10, US Dance #3)

A "cynical joke song" (as Neil has described it) that many people misunderstood and forever caused them to despise the Pet Shop Boys or at least view them with intense suspicion. Much of the problem lies in many listeners' inability to distinguish between the singer of a song and the lyrical persona that he or she has adopted while singing it. But the narrator of "Opportunities" is hardly Neil himself. (For one thing, he never "doctored in mathematics.") In fact, Neil has referred to the narrator as "a pathetic character" who, in the end, isn't at all likely to make "lots of money."

It seems that the Boys are satirizing the mercenary attitudes that they suspect (with good reason) that many performers have in their pursuit of success as pop stars. It can also be viewed as a more general commentary on the prevailing "greed is good" mentality (not to mention outright larceny: "If you have the inclination, I've got the crime") of the Thatcherite/Reaganite era, of which the somewhat socialistically inclined Boys undoubtedly disapproved. It was a message that much of the public&#;particularly in the United States&#;didn't want to hear, enamored as they are of the great mythology that rock music is (or should be) somehow above such pecuniary concerns. Musicians who are "only in it for the money" are thus viewed as fakes and traitors. By laying bare this very sentiment, in however a satirical fashion, Tennant and Lowe alienated rock fans who didn't want to hear it and thus turned it back on them. In short, the messengers were condemned on account of the message. Fortunately, this probably didn't matter much to Neil and Chris, who have never considered themselves "rock stars" and detest the mythologizing impulses that made so many listeners turn against them in the first place.

At it happens, "Opportunities" was the first Pet Shop Boys single on Parlophone/EMI, and although it gained little attention the first time around, it became a major hit when it was re-released in the wake of the tremendous international success of the second version of "West End Girls." Interestingly, it's the only PSB single that turned out to be a bigger hit in the U.S. than in the U.K. On Please it appears in two forms: the song proper (which is somewhat different from the single version) and later a brief "Reprise."

Another especially interesting note: although Neil writes nearly all of the Pet Shop Boys' lyrics, he confessed to interviewer Jude Rogers in the January issue of Word magazine that it was Chris who came up with the unforgettable line "I've got the brains, you've got the looks, let's make lots of money." In fact, Chris specifically asked Neil to write song lyrics based around those words.

Annotations

• Neil has stated that the lyrics for this song were partly inspired by the relationship between the characters that Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight portrayed in the film Midnight Cowboy.
  
  
• The Swiss singer Colette Meury is reportedly an uncredited backup singer on "Opportunities." Her voice can apparently be heard in the background "oos" and "ahs," and she also appears prominently in the "Singin' a song bap m dee bap" bit at around on the single version. She was a friend of co-producer J.J. Jaczalik and would sometimes do backup vocals for his sessions. She remembers that Chris's keyboard had "stickers" on it, and was reprimanded at one point by Neil for singing "Let's make loads of money" rather than "lots of money."
  
  
• "I studied at the Sorbonne" – The Sorbonne refers to the prestigious University of Paris, a nickname for the institution that comes from the name of one of its oldest, most famous buildings. It might also refer specificallly to the Collège de Sorbonne, a theological college that's part of the University of Paris, or one of several other branches of the University that also include "Sorbonne" in their titles. Of course, Neil did not study there, which underscores the fact that he himself is not the "narrator" of this song.
  
  
• "I could have been a don" – A don is a teacher at a British college or university, particularly one of the older, more prestigious institutions like Cambridge or Oxford. It derives from an old term of respect for a priest (at one time it wasn't at all unusual for college instructors also to be clergymen), which itself derives from similar honorifics given to priests and nobles in various Latin cultures (Spain, Italy, and Portugal).
  
  
• The final lines of the song, at least in some versions (and as quoted in the "Lyrics" section of the official PSB website), consist of the quatrain—

  All the love that we had
  And the love that we hide
  Who will bury us
  When we die?
  

  One of my site visitors has observed that these words could suggest that the song's narrator may be in love with the prospective business partner to whom he's been speaking throughout. Perhaps. But I've always viewed them simply as a rather poetic acknowledgment—possibly coming more as a commentary by Neil himself, stepping "out of character," than as an expression of the feelings of the character he's been portraying up to that point—that any success we might achieve in life is ultimately of little value if we don't have loved ones with whom to share it. In short, it undercuts the song's spoken message of mercenary opportunism, thereby serving to intensify its unspoken but obvious critique of that very sentiment. Then again, this expression is by no means contradictory to my site visitor's theory. They both could be accurate.
  

• In February , roughly 35 years after its release, "Opportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money)" went all the way up to #1 on the Billboard Electronic/Dance Digital Song Sales chart, which tracks paid downloads and streaming. This remarkable resurgence was triggered by the use of the PSB recording in a commercial for Allstate Insurance that aired during the post-game portion of the Super Bowl LV broadcast a few weeks prior.

Mixes/Versions

Officially released

• Mixer: Stephen Hague
  • Album version ()
  • Second 7" version ()
  • "Opportunities (reprise)" ()
    • A separate track on Please
• Mixer: The Latin Rascals and Ron Dean Miller
  • Version Latina ()
  • Version Latina - Edit ()
    • Officially released only on a rare Australian 7" promo
  • Dub for Money ()
• Mixer: J.J. Jeczalik and Nicholas Froome
  • Original 7" version (aka Short Version)
    • Available on the original vinyl single ()
    • Available on Essential ()
      • There are extremely subtle differences between these two appearances of this mix. On the original vinyl single, the piano at the end fades out a little more quickly than it does on Essential, resulting in a slightly shorter running time. Further, some drum beats in the middle of the song (around , depending on the version) sound subtly different in these two appearances of this mix.
  • Dance Mix (aka Original Dance Mix, aka Double Your Money Mix) ()
  • Full Length Original 7" Mix ()
    • Available on the Further Listening bonus disc with the Please reissue
• Mixer: J.J. Jeczalik, Nicholas Froome, and Pet Shop Boys
  • Original 12" Mix ()
    • Available on the Further Listening bonus disc with the Please reissue
• Mixer: unknown
  • Matrix Mix (aka Different Mix) ()
    • The mix of "Opportunities" that appears on Now That's What I Call Music 7 (U.K.) has sometimes been identified as a unique mix, different from this, but as best I (and various others) can tell, the two are essentially identical.
  • Whistle Test Mix ()
  • Demo - ()
• Mixer: Shep Pettibone
  • Shep Pettibone Mastermix ()
  • Reprise ()
    • Available on certain "Opportunities" inch singles
    • Not to be confused with the brief "Opportunities (reprise)" track on Please
• Mixer: Stuart Price
  • Inner Sanctum CD live version ()

Official but unreleased

• Mixer: unknown
  • Early s demo ()
  • Bobby "O" demo ()
  • Demo ()
  • In addition, at least four other early demo-type versions of "Opportunities" have come to light on bootleg releases.
• Mixer: Pet Shop Boys
  • November 24, XFM radio session version ()
  • October 9, KCRW radio session version ()
    • Part of a medley, so timing is approximate

List cross-references

All text on this website aside from direct quotations (such as of lyrics and of other nonoriginal content) is copyright © by Wayne Studer. All Rights Reserved. All lyrics and images are copyright © their respective dates by their respective owners. Brief quotations and small, low-resolution images are used for identification and critical commentary, thereby constituting Fair Use under U.S. copyright law. Billboard chart data are copyright © their respective dates by Nielsen Business Media, Inc.

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See Also: Song Info

See Also: Official Releases

Opportunities (Let's Make Lots Of Money ()

Opportunities (Let's Make Lots Of Money ()

'Opportunities' was released twice as a single. It was the first Pet Shop Boys release on Parlophone in , prior to the Please album. It was again released in remixed form in

Releases and versions

The release was issued in 7" and 12" formats around the world. Standard single and extended versions of the Jeczalik/Froome mix appeared coupled with the b-side In The Night (many versions of the 12" listed the extended version of the b-side, but were in fact the shorter version). Also, limited edition vinyl was issued with remixes by Ron Dean Miller of the Latin Rascals.

In , the re-recorded album version of the track was remixed by Shep Pettibone and released as the fourth single from Please. Later on that year, the Version Latina mix by Ron Dean Miller was included on Disco: The Remix Album.

Design and Packaging

The single artwork was compiled by XL design and featured black and white photos of Neil and Chris taken by Eric Watson. Music credits were written vertically in white on a black stripe at the side of the cover facings.

In , the cover was a sparse typographical design by Mark Farrow and the band themselves. No photos were included, simply the title and artist in gold and white on a field of grey. Some countries' releases altered the grey inking to black.

Videos

The music video for the first single release was directed Eric Watson and Andy Morahan. It depicts Chris in an underground parking garage; a Cadillac pulls up to him and stops, whereupon Tennant materializes in front of it, dressed in a hat, glasses, and a suit by British fashion designer Stephen Linard, and standing inside a rectangular hole in the ground while singing the song while his face continually twitches suggesting missing frames and inflates in similar fashion to a frog. The video ends with Tennant disintegrating into dust and the car driving away. Watson was partly inspired by the images of preachers in Wise Blood, the film adaptation of the Flannery O'Connor novel of the same title, in designing Tennant's appearance.

For the re-release, the prestigious Polish director Zbigniew Rybczyński (who previously directed Art Of Noise's famous 'Close (To The Edit)' video) was recruited. In the video, Tennant is again dressed in a suit and hat, while Lowe wears the hard hat, jeans, soiled shirt, and work gloves of a construction worker, depicting the two roles spoken of in the lyrics. The camera pans over a background of city skylines and clouds rendered in neon lines as Tennant and Lowe appear duplicated repeatedly, passing to each other symbols of the different statuses they represent — including a top hat, a trophy, a brick, and a sledgehammer.

Links

See Also: Song Info

See Also: Official Releases

Opportunities (Let's Make Lots Of Money ()

Opportunities (Let's Make Lots Of Money ()

lets make lots of money Date

19 May,

Chart Position

11 (UK), 10 (USA)