Songfacts®:

• This paean to raving started off as a joke based on the fact that dance songs don't have vocals anymore (Hence the line "I like the singer, he's lonely and strange – every track has a vocal, and that makes a change). However it then turned into something more heartfelt. Vocalist Neil Tennant recalled to Pop Justice: "I can remember us being on the Discovery tour in Brazil, and on the last night of the tour we were all on the dancefloor – me, our dancers, Chris Lowe, Chris Heath, in this club in either Sao Paulo or Rio, and it was just . I remember having a very similar experience when we were somewhere during the era when 'Music Sounds Better With You' was out, which is quite a long time ago…"
  
  "You couldn't get enough of that record at the time," he continued. "I remember looking around and everyone was just so happy. Also with 'Vocal', while I didn't do the rave thing in 1988 and 1989, Chris saw the light then and I was thinking of that from his perspective. It's actually a very sincere song."
• The video was produced and directed by the filmmaker and photographer Joost Vandebrug. It contains a collection of amateur footage shot at raves in the late 1980s, as well as material filmed in the infamous Haçienda in Manchester.
• This was the final track on Electric, the Pet Shop Boys' first independently released album. It was issued through the duo's own x2 label, via Kobalt Label Services.
• Electric debuted at #26 on the Billboard 200, the Pet Shop Boys' highest charting album in nearly 20 years. They last went higher with 1993's Very, which arrived and peaked at #20.