Songfacts®:

• This ballad deals with a financially one-sided relationship sung from the perspective of a kept woman. Vocalist Neil Tennant told Mojo magazine August 2013: "I come from an era when people didn't talk about sex at home, where a lot of things were unsaid. So you sort of had to read between the lines, to the extent that one could even, oneself, not know what the songs were about. 'Rent's' funny - I was imagining a woman who was being kept by a politician, but when people would ask, what is the missing word between 'I love you' and 'you pay my rent?', I'd say 'I don't know, really.' The title came about because we used to like the idea of provocative titles. That was a punk thing."
• The Pet Shop Boys dismissed this at the time as a "mercenary love song."
• The video for the song was directed by Derek Jarman. It features two intercut storylines: one filmed in black and white and the other in color. The color part features Liverpool actress Margi Clarke (Letter to Brezhnev) as the partner of a wealthy man, who is played by Alexander Thynn, 7th Marquess of Bath. Neil Tennant is their chauffeur.
• The title implies the lot of a rent boy (a male prostitute), and despite Liza Minelli covering it in 1989, it wasn't until a few years later that Neil Tennant confirmed that this song was written from a female perspective.
  
  "I've always thought of 'Rent' as a love song, although it's had all sorts of interpretations given to it," he explained to Q magazine in 1992. "It's about love at its most basic. People always thought it was about that rent boy arrangement but in my head I've always thought that it was about a politician's mistress. It takes place in New York, and it's a long-standing affair and they are in love but he's made no other commitment to her other than taking her to restaurants and buying her furs and paying for an apartment for her off Madison Avenue or somewhere. But the currency that she has spent is that she's given her whole life to him. But she loves him. So, I love you/You pay my rent is saying, I've had a life anyway. You've paid for my basic needs. A lot of my love songs tend to be about compromises. I was 32 years old when we started to become successful."
  
  "It's not idealistic, it's older, more realistic," he added. "'I love you/You pay my rent' is about compromise. It's really saying, It could be worse, this relationship isn't that bad, really. It's not perfect but then nothing is."
• "Rent" is sung in the 2023 comedy thriller film Saltburn during a tragic karaoke scene involving a young man named Ollie. It serves as a pivotal moment in the story, highlighting his character struggles and amplifying the film's overall themes.
• "Rent" is part of the second Pet Shop Boys album, Actually. In America it wasn't released as a single, but in their native UK it was the third single, following "It's A Sin" and "What Have I Done To Deserve This?" It's one of several Pet Shop Boys songs that is well known in the UK (where it went to #8) but an obscurity in America.