"King's Cross" is a Pet Shop Boys song, written by Chris Lowe and Neil Tennant[1] for their second studio album, Actually (1987).
[4] At the time the song was written in 1986,[5] during Margaret Thatcher's second term as Prime Minister, over three million people in the UK were unemployed, with northern England and Scotland among the hardest-hit regions.
[6] King's Cross was a run-down area with a notorious reputation, frequented by drug addicts and sex workers; it was also home to artists, musicians, activists, and members of the gay community, as well as nightlife venues like the Bell and Scala.
[4] The opening line, "The man at the back of the queue was sent to feel the smack of firm government", interprets a saying associated with Thatcher in a literal way, to mean the weakest person gets hit.
Producer Stephen Hague suggested adding a key change, and he recorded the sounds of trains approaching the station,[4] which were used to close out the album.
[4] For the Pet Shop Boys' first tour in 1989, filmmaker Derek Jarman created video projections to be shown during the performance of different songs, including "King's Cross".
We follow the unpredictable handheld camera as it judders and sways from the iconic mid-nineteenth-century gasworks, enclosed by a barbed-wire fence, through a street filled with market stalls and litter, into the crowded underground foyer, ending on a train leaving London.