"Left to My Own Devices" is a song by English synth-pop duo Pet Shop Boys, released in November 1988 by Parlophone as the second single from their third studio album, Introspective (1988).

[7] The day before their meeting with Horn, they made a demo at Abbey Road Studios of an instrumental by Chris Lowe, with a line Neil Tennant came up with, "left to my own devices I probably would".

[10][11] He included a childhood reminiscence of being "in a world of my own at the back of the garden" playing with toy soldiers at his family home in Newcastle, although he actually pretended to be a Cavalier instead of "a Roundhead general" as in the song.

[13] The album version includes a long outro in which fragments of the main song lyrics are cut into a different order, such as "Che Guevara's drinking tea".

[14] In April 2017, Pet Shop Boys released a new version of "Left to My Own Devices" as a bonus track on the single "Undertow" from their 2016 album Super.

[16] Miranda Sawyer from Smash Hits named "Left to My Own Devices" Single of the Fortnight, writing, "Pop perfection from the winsome twosome.

Complete with swank orchestra, this massive stomper galumphs away at a breakneck pace into all sorts of dramatic twists and turns, over which Neil's deadpan vocals sound brilliantly menacing.

"[17] The accompanying music video for "Left to My Own Devices", directed by longtime Pet Shop Boys director Eric Watson, primarily consists of Tennant and Lowe dancing on an invisible glass floor, with the camera angle facing upwards.

Watson had used a similar technique, filming through layers of perspex, on the video for "Breakaway" by the Australian band Big Pig, but Pet Shop Boys were not happy with the result.

[19] In 2024, the song was used in a television commercial titled "Clocking Off" for the British telecommunications company EE, depicting people leaving a drab workplace for a vibrant home life.