Pet Shop Boy Neil Tennant was raised Catholic, and his lyrics on "It's A Sin" reflect his unfavorable view of the church. This caused a lot of controversy but got the duo plenty of attention and helped make the song a huge hit in the UK, where it became their second #1, following "
West End Girls."
The ending stanza ("Confiteor Deo omnipotenti...") is sung in Latin. Loosely translated it reads: "Father my father, please forgive me for I have sinned, it is my fault, it is my fault."
The lyrics were a way for Neil Tennant to get back at some of his teachers at St. Cuthbert's Grammar School, an all-boys Catholic school in Newcastle Upon Tyne he attended. That school is also the subject of the 1990 Pet Shop Boys song "This Must Be the Place I Waited Years to Leave."
Pet Shop Boys proved that you didn't need to be road warriors to land hits in the '80s. They didn't tour, relying instead on TV appearances and music videos. The video for "It's A Sin" was directed by Derek Jarman and shows the group under inquisition. The Seven Deadly Sins are represented by different characters, like a guy hoarding gold coins for greed.
Julian Mendelsohn reunited with Pet Shop Boys to produce and engineer most of the songs for their second album, Actually, after doing the same for the track "Suburbia" on the duo's debut album two years before. In a Sound on Sound interview, Mendelsohn explained his job on the Actually album:
"My role as a producer on that album was just getting it all recorded. I also made a few suggestions here and there - you know, 'We can get a better sound for this' or 'Try singing that part again.' In those days, Neil wasn't a great singer and he knew it. So, there was always a bit of work involved in getting his vocals right. He's improved a hell of a lot since then."
In a bid to keep himself focused and the songs fresh, Mendelsohn tried not to labor over any individual track too much, with the exception of "It's a Sin." He explained: "I remember describing a sound or a feel that I was after and sy[synthesizer/keyboard programmer] Andy Richards not quite understanding what I wanted. We were still there at midnight and he was saying, 'Well, what do you want?' My answer was, 'I want it like this, but I can't quite explain,' and there were a couple of times when we got fairly angry and frustrated with each other. I had this thing in my mind: 'I want it like that and I'm going to get it like that.'"
The thunder sound was created on a Roland keyboard.
The UK TV presenter Jonathan King started some beef with The Pet Shop Boys by accusing them of stealing the melody from Cat Stevens' 1971 song "
Wild World" for "It's A Sin." He even recorded his own
cover of "It's A Sin" replaced with the "Wild World" lyrics to prove his point. Pet Shop Boys sued him for defamation, and in the court case, a musicologist explained that those chords date back to Johann Sebastian Bach. The case was settled out of court and the duo donated the money to charity. The controversy tarnished King's reputation but earned the song more attention in the UK.
The electronic pop group Years & Years released
their take on the song on January 21, 2021. Their version coincided with the broadcasting of the Channel 4 series
It's a Sin, which stars frontman Olly Alexander in the lead role.
Elton John and Years & Years' Olly Alexander performed the song at the 2021 BRIT Awards, then released their interpretation simultaneously as a single in aid of the Elton John Aids Foundation. Stuart Price (The Killers, Madonna, Dua Lipa) produced their version. It peaked at #47 on the UK singles chart.
Elton included their cover on his 2021 album The Lockdown Sessions.
In a 1992 interview with Q magazine, Pet Shop Boys Chris Lowe and Neil Tennant explained how this song came together.
"Chris was playing these chords for the verse, which is actually the hook of the song, and the words - it's a sin - came to me immediately," Tennant said. "The middle eighty bit - the bit that goes, Father forgive me, I tried not to do it - Chris had been playing earlier in the evening and I said, Put that in. Then I came up with the, Everything I've ever done, everything I ever do part which leads to the chorus.
The lyrics for the first two verses came to me very quickly. Chris had said to me that he thought my lyrics were getting too complicated and that I should make them more seedy and sexy. So 'It's A Sin' is my attempt at being seedy. Of course, my interpretation of seediness is quite chaste, so we ended up with this Catholic guilt thing."
Note that the third verse is nearly identical to the first, but with the opening line, "When I look back upon my life," changed to "So I look back upon my life." That's because Neil Tennant couldn't think of a last verse to close out the song.
"It's really, really weak, isn't it?" he told Q. "Well, the first verse said all I wanted to say and then the second verse was illustration about being at school and by the time the third verse came around I'd run out of steam. But it's a circular song and in that sense it does work."
"It's A Sin" shows up in the 2025 season 4 episode of The Righteous Gemstones, "You Hurled Me Into the Very Heart of the Seas," in a scene where members of the Gemstone family use jetpacks during a church service. The song is also used in the 2008 movie Bronson and the 2003 movie Party Monster.
