Pet Shop Boys’ Killer track

The Pet Shop Boys think their Bruce Springsteen cover sounds like The Killers.

The electro duo – Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe – have recorded a version of The Boss’ ‘The Last to Die’ and they couldn’t believe the resulting track once they had completed work with producer Stuart Price.

Neil said: ”Chris’ sister told him she’d heard this really good Bruce Springsteen song. We decided it would work for us because it has this great guitar riff.

”It’s a really fantastic piece of writing. It’s inspired by a quotation from John Kerry – who fought in Vietnam and appeared in front of some Senate committee in 1971, and he said ‘How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?’

”Bruce Springsteen revived this in the wake of the Iraq War. It’s a very powerful song, and it works with the four on the floor.

”Once Stuart got his hands on it we realised that Bruce Springsteen plus Pet Shop Boys, produced by Stuart Price, equals The Killers!”

The ‘West End Girls’ hitmakers are flattered to influence many high-profile acts but struggle to see the resemblance between their songs and those they have inspired.

Neil told Time Out Hong Kong: ”What I quite like is that people often do what they think sounds like us and we normally don’t think it sounds like us.

”I think we’re just quite flattered and surprised by it.

”Through our entire career we’ve tried to present things in a way that sometimes means people don’t know how to take us. For example, we don’t like to do ‘serious’ by being serious.

”And you sort of worry about how people interpret what you do, but a generation has come along who have just accepted and enjoyed it.”