Songfacts®:

• This song plays on the trope of this classic partnership proposal:
  
  I've got the brains, you've got the looks
  Let's make lots of money
  
  The song is a send-up of the capitalist culture that makes this possible, and of the entertainment industry in general. Pet Shop Boys frontman Neil Tennant, who wrote the lyric, was a writer at Smash Hits magazine, where he got an inside look at how the system operates.
• This song was written during the Pet Shop Boys' formative years, in 1983. They recorded it in 1984 with the American dance producer Bobby O, but that version was never released. After issuing "West End Girls" that year on Epic Records, they had a fall-out with Bobby O and moved on to EMI Records, which released "Opportunities" as their first single on the label in July 1985.
  
  EMI thought it was a sure hit, but the song flopped. Pet Shop Boys answered by re-recording "West End Girls" with producer Stephen Hague and pushing that as their next single. EMI wasn't happy with the song, but released it at the group's behest. This new version took off, going to #1 in both the UK and, surprisingly for a song about the bar scene in London, in the US.
  
  Riding this wave, a new version of "Opportunities" was mixed and again released as a single. This time, it rose to #11 in the UK and made #10 in America, becoming the only single from the band to chart higher in the US than in the UK.
• Neil Tennant's lyrics were written as a satire of Thatcherism and its embodiment of conspicuous consumption in the United Kingdom during the 1980s. The Pet Shop singer penned them after his bandmate, keyboardist Chris Lowe, asked him to make up a lyric based around the line "let's make lots of money."
  
  Tennant commented to Mojo magazine, August 2013: "It's a simple message isn't it? 'I've got the brains, you've got the looks, let's make lots of money.' A very insensitive thing that was meant to be a satire of Thatcherism. Actually, we'd written the Thatcherite anthem. But it's very difficult to think, now, that there was a period before money culture. That was the changing moment. It wasn't even an original thing to say because it was at the same time as Loadsamoney, Harry Enfield. It was that period where suddenly one's sensitive left-wing soul was shocked by everything being about money. Now, of course, generations have grown that haven't known anything else."
• A snippet of the song is played during The Simpsons episode "Husbands and Knives," to demonstrate Marge's increasing profits from a women's fitness club.
• This was used in a 2021 Allstate commercial titled "duet." In the spot, a driver sings along to the song, excited because he saved money. His ornament then starts singing along with him.
  
  First aired during Super Bowl LV, the ad was in heavy rotation for several weeks afterwards, triggering a wave of renewed interest in Pet Shop Boys. The song re-entered the US charts, topping Billboard's Dance/Electronic Songs tally.