“Dance It Down”

[Propertius]

I’d never heard this 1983 song by The Pool before yesterday, but I saw a claim it inspired “West End Girls” so I checked it out—and there are some similarities. The Pool was a one-man indie act from Austin, Texas, the project of one Patrick S. Keel. The track is structurally a bit similar to West End girls, especially Keel’s delivery of his lyrics. When he says “Austin town” you can almost hear “West End town.” He has a line in there, “we come to rock and we don’t compete” that’s a little reminiscent of Neil’s “pass the test and you don’t compete” in “Left to my own devices” too.

The song is on YouTube, Apple Music, etc. I’m curious how similar others find it. Not musical plagiarism to my ears, but it’s a cousin to West End girls. Maybe it was the inspiration for Big Audio Dynamite’s “E=MC2”…

[dbaseboy]

Great find. You can hear the influence, but whether it did is of course subjective (unless anyone has any evidence of the Boys acknowledging it?). My friend is adamant that ABC’s “Look of love” was the inspiration for West End girls. Again I can hear it but not come across anything to back up his claim. TBF, there are a number of tracks out there which appear to have some bearing on PSB’s music over the years. Either way, you can’t knock 40 years of great songwriting and production can you, and even the best need a little inspiration

[Dog]

I only heard this for the first time recently too and found it intriguing. Apparently Afrika Bambaataa used to play it at the Danceteria when it came out. You can definitely imagine Neil hearing it there during one of his early US visits. Of course The Message by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five is Neil’s official credited inspiration.

[alternativeformat]

My friend is adamant that ABC’s “Look of love” was the inspiration for West End girls.

That's so funny to hear someone else say this just now. Only recently, "The look of love" playing in the background at the gym with mostly just the bassline coming through, I wondered for a second if it was "West End girls", until I heard it more clearly. While the affect of the two are quite different, the punchy cadence of the titular lyrics is very similar. Made me want to hear a mashup of them, but it doesn't appear anyone ever made one. Two pinnacle tracks of the era.