The Singles Jukebox

We definitely think they’re monkeying around…

[Video]
[5.67]

Edward Okulicz: This song has made me realise that the worst thing isn’t growing up and turning into the people you used to hate, it’s growing up and turning into the people you used to satirise.
[4]

Alfred Soto: Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe are magnificent. This song is dull as hell. It’s one thing to imitate a human resources vice president knocking back scotches at the Hilton bar; it’s another for a fun dance track to sound as if the vice president wrote and produced it.
[4]

Ian Mathers: Genuinely stoked they’ve entered the “Big Balls” so-single-entendre-it’s-a-thrill era of their songwriting; the relentless synth arpeggios and disco strings are, if not terribly novel, a reliably chocolate-and-peanut-butter kind of combo.
[7]

Brad Shoup: Grafting a dumbass subcontractor into “Stayin’ Alive” is a brilliant move, and I hope it was intentional. (My hometown inspired the chorus, and probably “bring me margaritas!” as well) Cos there’s nothing mystic or transcendent or even particularly arch, just a magnificent Euro-disco shuffle that threatens to tip into filter house whenever Chris steps to the mic.
[6]

Thomas Inskeep: Silly but energetic, and it sounds like Neil and Chris are having fun on “Monkey Business,” something they’re not sounded a lot like recently on record, so I’m happy for that. Hearing Tennant sing-shout “Bring me margaritas! Champagne and red wine!” is a little thrill. The disco strings help, too.
[6]

Scott Mildenhall: Not the deepest release of their career, but probably the funkiest. As a character portrait it merely scratches the surface, Neil Tennant’s bon vivant betraying only chinks of a backstory; barely enough for the subtext that persona-led Pet Shop Boys songs prime for. It may just be that Tennant is revelling in playing this grandstander with gusto, the disco arrangement unfurling around him like the inner fanfare of an imperviously cocksure VIP; a self-lit luminary on a local scale.
[7]