If you tuned into Drake’s surprise drop album, For All The Dogs, this weekend, you won’t have missed his tiny rendition of what’s been named the greatest UK number one single of all time.
That song is West End Girls, by the Pet Shop Boys, an ice-cold slice of pioneering pop from 1984 that was so good – so the folklore goes – it reportedly almost caused Dusty Springfield to crash her car when she heard it for the first time.
From wedding receptions to Boiler Room, the song is rightfully still a staple in every good DJ’s set, so it’s not entirely surprising that Drizzy would one day want to interpolate it into one of his tracks. Except it appears that his version – towards the end of his song with Chief Keef – was done without requesting permission from the Pet Shop Boys (from minute 2.37 onwards).
On Friday 6 October, the Pet Shop Boys – presumably either Neil Tennant or Chris Lowe – wrote on X (formerly known as Twitter): “Surprising to hear @Drake singing the chorus of “West End girls” in the track “All the Parties” on his new album. No credit given or permission requested.”
As owners of the intellectual property on this song, PSB would have expected Drake to contact their publishers long before the track was released, to clear his cover of the most famous few lines of the song. The fact that it came as a surprise (read: shock) suggests that Tennant and Lowe were genuinely blindsided by it, and that Drake and his people haven’t done their due diligence over an industry standard issue.
So has this led to a furious rush over the weekend to straighten it all out? Well, if you jump on to Spotify, where the track has currently been played 5.9 million times, there’s still no credits for Tennant and Lowe.
So has there been some behind the scenes resolution? A spokesperson for the Pet Shop Boys directed us to back their X account for any update (of which there’s nothing as yet) and Esquire have reached out to both Drake’s PR and PSB’s publishers, Kobalt – who they tagged in their tweet – for comment.
One music industry expert told Esquire there’s only one of two ways this can be sorted: “The publishers name their price, or you take the song down.” Let's see how this plays out.
