Pet Shop Boys covering someone else’s song isn’t unusual in the least. Over the British duo’s impressive 30-year career, they’ve tackled tunes from Elvis Presley, U2, Frankie Valli, Sterling Void, Village People, Coldplay, Dave Clark Five, and the West Side Story soundtrack — to name several.

So it’s not so much that Pet Shop Boys’ new album, Electric, comes equipped with a cover, but that Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe have chosen Bruce Springsteen’s “The Last To Die,” from his 2007 album, Magic. Inspired by the then still-raging Iraq War and its parallel to the not-so-distant past, Springsteen partially quotes Vietnam veteran John Kerry’s 1971 testimony before the U.S. Senate: “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?”

“The Last To Die” was recorded at the suggestion of Chris’ sister, who brought the song to their attention. Talking to Spin about Electric, Neil explained why The Boss proved a good fit for the Boys:

“My favorite records by Bruce Springsteen are pop records: ‘Dancing In The Dark,’ ‘Tunnel Of Love,’ ‘Streets Of Philadelphia.’ I think the cover we’ve done [‘The Last to Die’] on this album makes it into a pop song. But we haven’t changed it any way at all. It’s just done in a pop style rather than his E Street Band style. We could do a lot of Bruce Springsteen — not that we will. They’re very powerfully written songs with good melodies and quite simple chord changes, more simple than our chord changes, so they take to the electronic treatment.”

One of Pet Shop Boys’ strengths has been their rather brilliant ability to transform the possibly incongruous into sublime pop, whether referencing a classical composer’s work or covering someone else’s song. Continuing that tradition, Pet Shop Boys’ amping-up of Springsteen’s anti-war anthem (with the assistance of producer Stuart Price) is an absolute winner.

Purchase Pet Shop Boys – “The Last To Die” (Bruce Springsteen cover) via iTunes, Amazon MP3.