Chris Neil did the chorus chords.

Neil If it is a chorus. Dainton came back with the Penguin English-Spanish dictionary and a Berlitz phrasebook, and I flicked through them, looking for phrases, and I thought, here's a good one: 'hay una Discoteca por aqul?' It had a good rhythm and it'd work as a chant: 'Is there a discotheque near here?' Then I also found, 'te qujero', 'entiende usted?',

'digame' and 'cuanto tiempe tengo que esperar?' -'I love you. Do you understand? Tell me. How long must I wait?' I think the 'How long must I wait?' came from the going the doctor's section. At that point it wasn't going t6liave any more words. The following April we decided to put words and a melody to the verse. To begin with, it had totally different words and the tune was different. I was trying to make sense out of the whole concept of why it was in a foreign language, and at this point it started being about being lost in a country. Not knowing where you are. Later in the year I changed it again, and the final version is about someone dealing with HIV or Aids. There's a sense of catastrophe. It's saying: how do you deal with something going so wrong? Do you panic? Or do you go out and carry on as normal? Which is what I think most people do. And then it uses the idea of being in a foreign country as a metaphor:

suddenly everything that was familiar is unfamiliar. 'I don't speak the language, I can't understand a word.' and in the chorus the person singing goes to the discotheque because he's going out and carrying on as normal. It's quite a grim song, but it sounds very beautiful. The start, a classic Pet Shop Boys start with a sequencer line followed by a minor chord coming in, never changed from the original demo.

Chris This is part of the 'Dreaming of the Queen' range of Pet Shop sounds. It's got a very unusual baseline as well, and the drum pattern is very odd.

Neil When Chris first did the drum programming I couldn't get a handle on it. I couldn't work it out.

Chris It sounds really big, doesn't it?

Neil Well, it is big. There are twenty women called She Boom playing drums. She Boom came down from Glasgow, and they looked fantastic. It was dead loud in the studio. We thought we'd discovered a new sound. It's like nothing else. It's all very moody.

Chris I think it's very uplifting.

Neil Well, it is. It's about survival.

Chris This wasn't a single, was it? We're mad.

Neil The fans all hate this track.

Chris Well, they're wrong.

Neil Wearied to record a single version of it, because we thought it should be a single. After Bilingual was finished, we went back into the studio. Katie Kissoon came in and sang 'one day we'll be free', because we thought it sounded like a really clubby line. We used that as a hook and did that version [CD2, track 8] and we really liked it but we thought it wasn't a single. That version was never released, though it was the basis of the version we played on the Nightlife tour in 1999. Then we decided to re-record the whole track, and we had some Spanish-speaking backing singers come in and sing the chorus with me-they also shout 'bacalao', which is Spanish for a type of salted cod, believe it or not, but which I was told they shouted in Canarlan clubs when they were very excited by house music - and sped up the whole thing and did a totally different version [CD2, track 10]. We spent ages and ages working on it and then we decided it wasn't a single, so it was just released as a b-side to 'Single-bilingual'.

Chris We used a Bobby '0' type riff. It's like his 'I'm So Hot For You', which itself was heavily lifted from The Human League's 'Don't You Want Me'.

Neil We were trying to get more of a chorus. I did this rap, and I took the rhythm from Stretch And Vern's 'I'm Alive' which had just been a hit. Chrls ordered me to write a rap in the same rhythm as that, and I dutifully complied.

Chris He's a jobbing writer.

Neil What I actually say is: 'Understand the man who can talk in tongues! and you're ready to speak like a Shakespeare'. It seemed to mean something at the time.