Home > Discography >

Where the Streets Have No Name
(I Can't Take My Eyes Off You)

Writers - Hewson/Evans/Mullen/Clayton - Gaudio/Crewe
First released - 1991
Original album - Discography
Producer - Julian Mendelsohn, Pet Shop Boys
Subsequent albums - PopArt, Ultimate, Behaviour 2001 reissue Further Listening 1990-1991 bonus disc, Smash
Other releases - single (UK #4,* US #72, US Dance Sales #3, US Dance #4)

*In the U.K. this was one side of a double-sided single with "How Can You Expect to Be Taken Seriously?"; as such, both tracks deserve credit for the single's #4 placement.

"It's just show business. There's no difference between Whitney Houston and U2."
                       – Neil in an interview circa 1988

Neil and Chris have said that they were drawn to U2's "Where the Streets Have No Name" by the opening guitar sequence, which struck them as similar to the sort of repeating riff that might be played on a synthesizer. And they claimed that they made it into a medley with the 1967 Frankie Valli chestnut "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" (though they've said they were actually more familiar with the 1982 dance remake by the Boys Town Gang) simply because harmonically it seemed the natural thing to do. (The original leaves "I" out of its title, while the Pet Shop Boys include it.)

It's virtually certain, however, that they had something much more in mind. In fact, this track is one of the most insidious deconstructions of rock mythology that you're likely to find anywhere. It completely takes the wind out of U2's sails, essentially revealing the original to be precisely the dance track that it is but tries hard not to be. This is underscored in the video and during their "Performance" tour through the use of imagery from the American West, albeit with fey twists. "In our live concert," Neil has stated, "'Streets' was meant to be totally the opposite of anything U2 would ever be—all these dancers and me in a pink satin suit." Turning it into a medley with such an innocuous love song further subverts the song's lyrical mythos, even trivializing it. A musical non sequitur, it can only be explained as outrageous satire, implicitly suggesting that there's little if any substantive difference between the two songs.

It's also no accident that this medley was paired up with "How Can You Expect to Be Taken Seriously?" as a double A-side single. Both recordings deal in one way or another with the pretensions of pop/rock stars—a fact made all the more apparent by their respective videos, shot in similar styles by the same director in such a way as to emphasize the connection.

Interestingly, Neil and Chris take pride in the possibility that what they did here may have helped to "loosen up" U2, which shortly thereafter began progressively to deconstruct their own image and mythos via the albums Achtung Baby, Zooropa, and Pop. As Neil puts it, "We did with them what they've done with them before they did it, if you know what I mean."

As for U2's original lyrical intent, I had long suspected that this three-quarters Christian band was referring to heaven as a place where the streets have no name. An email correspondent wrote that he believed these Irish lads were actually referring to the fact that, in Northern Ireland, locals made a habit of taking down street signs so that the non-local British police would have great difficulty finding their way around. But perhaps we should let Bono have his own say. On the official U2 website, he states that someone had told him you could tell how much money someone in Belfast makes by the name of the street on which they live. This set him to thinking about a place where the streets have no name—that is, where there aren't any such economic distinctions, or at least where they aren't important. Heaven again? Yet in an extensive interview in the November 3, 2005 issue of Rolling Stone, Bono suggests that it was inspired by a refugee camp in Ethiopia:

"[O]utside the context of Africa, it doesn't make any sense.… In the desert, we meet God. In parched times, in fire and flood, we discover who we are.… [W]here the streets have no name. You can call it 'soul' or 'imagination,' the place where you glimpse God, your potential, whatever."

I like this explanation, but there's no getting around the fact that the story has changed. This just goes to show how one shouldn't put too much stock in what artists say about their own art (re: the "intentional fallacy"). And it also demonstrates once again how a rich piece of work invites multiple interpretations—yes, even from its own creator.

Annotations

• U2's original version of "Where the Streets Have No Name" opened their phenomenally successful 1987 album The Joshua Tree and served as its third single later that same year. Some of the interpretations of the begged question at its core—just where do the streets have no name?—are discussed above.
  
  
• A famous (and very amusing) anecdote in rock/pop circles reports that, upon learning of the PSB cover, a member of U2—often cited as Bono but, as I understand it, more authoritatively attributed to bandmate The Edge (Dave Evans)—cleverly quipped, "What have I, what have I, what have I done to deserve this?"
  
  
• In her 2013 autobiography Absolute Beginner, Patsy Kensit (of the band Eighth Wonder) describes working with Chris and Neil in 1987, at which time they suggested that she cover "Where the Streets Have No Name," which had been only very recently been released by U2. Obviously they all decided against it, which left the Boys to cover it themselves a few years later. Instead Patsy recorded the Tennant-Lowe original "I'm Not Scared."
  
  
• "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" from 1967 was Frankie Valli's first big hit as a solo artist, reaching #2 on the Billboard singles chart. (He'd previously had a couple much smaller solo hits, though of course he had already enjoyed many big hits, including four Number Ones, as the lead singer of the Four Seasons. One of Valli's fellow Seasons, Bob Gaudio, was co-writer and co-arranger of the song.) It has proved to be one of the most covered pop songs of the Rock Era, having spawned literally hundreds of remakes. In fact, it was one of its first remakes—Andy Williams's cover the following year, 1968—that became a major hit single in the U.K. as opposed to Valli's original. Based on statements they've made through the years, it would seem that the Boys were much more familiar with the Williams rendition than Valli's.
  
  
• Shortly after recording this track, Chris and Neil told journalist Chris Heath (as it turned out, rather facetiously) that they were going to follow it up with a couple other medleys of classic U2 songs with pop hits: "With or Without You" with the Badfinger/Harry Nilsson ballad "Without You," and "Pride (In the Name of Love)" with Sharon Redd's 1982 dance hit "In the Name of Love." In fact, they suggested that they would soon release an entire EP of dance versions of classic rock hits—but of course nothing ever came of it.
  
  
• It's worth noting that on the packaging and notes for their 2023 hits boxed set Smash the "dual title" of this track is rendered—for the first time, if I'm not mistaken—with a slash mark (aka a "solidus") between the titles of its two component songs rather than with the second title placed in parentheses. Is this a mistake (its repetition notwithstanding) or have the Boys and/or certain attorneys for the interested parties consciously settled on the change? (It also appears with the slash in the text of Annually 2023, but that's also in conjunction with Smash.) So far I'm not aware of any "official" explanation. On the other hand, it may not have any actual significance. After all, there have been such inconsistencies in the titling of PSB tracks throughout their career, such as "How I Learned to Hate Rock-and-Roll" on Format as opposed to "How I Learned to Hate Rock 'n' Roll" on the Bilingual reissue Further Listening disc (even if you overlook my refusal to follow their idiosyncratic capitalization preferences), and "Paninaro '95" with the apostrophe on preceding releases but "Paninaro 95" without the apostrophe on Smash. There are other cases like this as well. So it may be somewhat over-analytical to try to assign any "meaning" to the punctuation differences in this track's title.

Mixes/Versions

Officially released

• Mixer: Pet Shop Boys and Julian Mendelsohn
  • Original 7" Mix (4:31)
    • Available on Discography
  • Extended Mix (6:46)
    • Available on the Further Listening bonus disc with the Behaviour reissue
• Mixer: David Morales
  • David Morales Remix (6:24)
  • Red Zone Mix (6:18)
    • Curiously, although these two mixes are labeled differently and have different lengths (both as labeled and in actuality), they appear, at least superficially, to be identical, and have been noted as such elsewhere (such as on the Pet Shop Boys Catalogue website). Their openings and conclusions are identical, so what accounts for the several seconds of difference in their lengths? As it turns out, a side-by-side comparison using audio software (courtesy of one of my regular site visitors) reveals that there's an ever-so-slight difference in speed/tempo—slight enough to be virtually imperceptible, but nevertheless sufficient, over the course of more than six minutes, to result in a difference in lengths, compounded by the David Morales Remix having a very slightly more extended fadeout. (Please note, however, that you can't necessarily go by the apparent postings of these mixes online, such as on YouTube; some of them are misidentified.)
  • 12" Dance Mix (7:36)
  • Eclipse Mix (1:41)
  • SKA Reprise (3:03)
  • Sound Factory Mix (4:38)
• Mixer: unknown
  • 7" Full Length Mix (5:34)

Official but unreleased

• Mixer: David Morales
  • 7-inch remix (4:11)
  • 7-inch Dance Mix (4:21)
    • Appear on an official EMI reference CD by Abbey Road Studios designed for client review before determing the tracks for the 2001 reissues bonus Further Listening discs.

List cross-references

• Peak positions of PSB singles on the Cash Box charts
• The 10 biggest PSB hits on the U.S. Billboard "Hot 100" singles chart
• Other songs in which Chris's voice can be heard
• PSB "cover songs" and who first recorded them
• The Pet Shop Boys' greatest acts of deconstruction
• 10 perhaps surprising influences on the Pet Shop Boys
• 8 perhaps surprising influences by the Pet Shop Boys on others
• The key signatures of selected PSB songs
• My favorite PSB single sleeves
• The 10 longest PSB song (or track) titles
• My 5 favorite non-originals covered by PSB
• PSB songs with lyrics that don't contain the title
• The 10 shortest PSB tracks
• PSB songs for which the Boys have acknowledged the influence of specific tracks by other artists
• 10 things the Pet Shop Boys did to commit career suicide in the U.S.
• The Pet Shop Boys' appearances on Top of the Pops
• PSB songs that have been used in films and "non-musical" TV shows
• How PSB singles differ (if at all) from the album versions
• PSB songs with "Russian connections"
• PSB songs based on classical compositions (and some others with "classical connections")
• Nods to PSB history in the "A New Bohemia" video

---

All text on this website aside from direct quotations (such as of lyrics and of other nonoriginal content) is copyright © 2001-2024 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.