Pet Shop Boys(park II)

Introspective, Behaviour and the Performance tour (1988-1992)

The duo's third studio album, Introspective, was released on October 10, 1988 and was followed by the Trevor Horn-produced single "Left to my own devices", and a cover version of the Sterling Void single "It's alright" in 1989. 1989 also saw the start of Pet Shop Boys' first tour, in which they performed in Hong Kong, Japan and Britain. The tour followed the ideas of the extravaganza that could not have been afforded earlier in their career. Derek Jarman returned to direct the performance, and he provided several films that were projected during the shows.

On September 24, 1990, a new single, "So hard," was released, and Pet Shop Boys' fourth studio album followed on October 22, 1990. Behaviour was recorded in Munich with producer Harold Faltermeyer. The album was never intended to be a dramatic change in mood to their earlier albums, but it is noticeably subdued. It included the fan-favourite "Being Boring," the second single from the album, which only reached number 20 in the UK singles chart, their lowest placing at the time. The song was inspired by a quote by Zelda Fitzgerald: "...she refused to be bored chiefly because she wasn’t boring" and was widely thought to be a commentary on the AIDS epidemic. The music video was directed by film-maker Bruce Weber. By this time, the duo had also parted ways with manager Tom Watkins, replacing him with Jill Carrington.[8]

In March 1991, a cover of U2's "Where the Streets Have No Name" as a medley with "Can't Take My Eyes Off You," the 1960s pop song by Frankie Valli/The Four Seasons, was released as a non-album single, followed by the duo's first world tour. Named "Performance", the tour kicked off in Tokyo on March 11, 1990. The tour also visited: the United States, Canada, France, Belgium, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Ireland and the United Kingdom. The shows were designed by David Alden and David Fielding, who had designed several sets for the London Opera.

Before taking a break in 1992, Pet Shop Boys released a greatest hits collection, Discography in 1991, which included two new singles: "DJ Culture" and "Was It Worth It?".

However, during this period, Pet Shop Boys continued to collaborate with many high-profile musicians. They worked again with Dusty Springfield on the singles "Nothing Has Been Proved" (which was a song written for their soundtrack for the film Scandal about the Profumo political scandal in Britain), and "In Private". The duo later went on to produce half of the tracks on her 1990 solo Reputation album. Pet Shop Boys were also asked to write and produce an album for Liza Minnelli in 1989. The album, Results, included the hit single "Losing My Mind," a cover version of the Stephen Sondheim song. The duo's own version of this appeared on the "Jealousy" single as a B-side. Neil Tennant also worked with Bernard Sumner and Johnny Marr on their first album as Electronic, whose first single, "Getting Away With It," co-written and co-produced by Neil Tennant, was released on December 4, 1989. Later, in 1991, Lowe also contributed to the Electronic project by working on the track "The Patience of a Saint" for their 1991 album; finally, in 1992, Tennant sang lead vocals on their non-album single "Disappointed", which was featured on the soundtrack to the movie Cool World. In addition, a remix of "So Hard" by notorious electronic music duo The KLF, released as a separate single, led to Tennant re-recording his vocals for the song entirely.

Pet Shop Boys set up the Spaghetti Records label in 1991. Their most successful release was the soundtrack to the 1992 film The Crying Game which featured Boy George performing the title song. The song was produced by Pet Shop Boys and featured Tennant on backing vocals. Other artists on the label included Scottish singer David Cicero, The Ignorants, and Masterboy.

The Very era (1993-1995)


In June 1993, Pet Shop Boys made a strong return to the UK Singles Chart with "Can you forgive her?". Taking its title from the Anthony Trollope novel of the same name, the single reached number 7 in the UK Singles Chart, and the iconic music video features the duo in orange body suits and tall dunce caps in a world of computer-generated imagery. The theme was continued with the follow-up single, a cover of the Village People single "Go West", which reached number 2 in the UK, with another computer-generated music video, this time inspired by the Soviet Union. The duo's fifth studio album, Very followed on September 27 and is the only Pet Shop Boys album to reach number one on the UK Albums Chart. It was produced by Pet Shop Boys and mixed with additional production by Stephen Hague who had produced their first album and subsequently produced records by New Order and Erasure. The other singles from Very, "I wouldn't normally do this kind of thing", "Liberation", and "Yesterday, when I was mad", continued the theme of computer-generated videos, peaking with the "Liberation" video, which contained almost no real-life elements at all. All these videos were directed by Howard Greenhalgh who continued to work with Pet Shop Boys well into the next decade.

In 1994, Pet Shop Boys offered to remix fellow Parlophone artist Blur's single "Girls & Boys"; it was a club hit throughout Europe and started a sporadic trend for Pet Shop Boys to remix other artists' music.

In 1994, Pet Shop Boys released the 1994 Comic Relief single, "Absolutely Fabulous". The song started when Tennant and Lowe were playing around with samples from the BBC sitcom Absolutely Fabulous in the studio. They wanted to release a single, so approached lead actors Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley, and suggested releasing it as a charity single. The single was released under the artist name of "Absolutely Fabulous". Tennant and Lowe do not consider it a Pet Shop Boys' single release and it was not included on their last compilation CD of singles, "PopArt". The video to the single featured clips from the sitcom along with newly recorded footage of Tennant and Lowe with the characters of Edina (Saunders) and Patsy (Lumley).

On September 12, Pet Shop Boys released the follow-up to their 1986 remix album Disco in the form of Disco 2. The album featured club remixes of the singles released from Very in a continuous megamix by Danny Rampling. Then, in October, Pet Shop Boys began their "Discovery" tour which would see them visit countries that they had never performed in before: Singapore, Australia, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Colombia, Chile, Argentina and Brazil. The following year, a new version of the 1986 B-side to "Suburbia", "Paninaro", is released to promoted a B-side collection album, Alternative. The single, called "Paninaro '95" is based on the live version from the "Discovery" tour.

Bilingual, Nightlife, and the musical (1996-2001)
In November 1995, Neil Tennant saw David Bowie live at Wembley Stadium and met him backstage. Whilst discussing Bowie's recent album Outside, Tennant mentioned that his favourite track was "Hallo Spaceboy". Jokingly, Bowie said that Pet Shop Boys should remix the track, and, a week later, phoned Tennant asking for this to happen. The new version was completely re-recorded and featured Tennant on backing vocals, using additional lyrics from Bowie's first hit song, "Space Oddity". The single was released on February 19, 1996.

In April, Pet Shop Boys released a new single, "Before", leading up to their forthcoming album; the single reached number 7 in the UK Singles Chart. That same month, Tina Turner also released her Wildest Dreams album, which featured Pet Shop Boys-produced track "Confidential". In August, Pet Shop Boys released a follow-up single, "Se a vida é (That's the way life is)", a Latin American music-inspired track featuring a drum sample from a track called "Estrada Da Paixão" by Brazilian act Olodum. This preceded the sixth Pet Shop Boys album Bilingual which was released in September.

In December 1996, Neil appeared live with Suede singing the Suede song "Saturday Night" as a duet with Brett Anderson, and Pet Shop Boys track "Rent". Both live tracks were released with the Suede single "Filmstar" in July 1997.

Pet Shop Boys kicked off Summer 1997 with a sold-out three-week residency at the Savoy Theatre in London in June. Entitled "Somewhere" and being promoted by a cover version of the song "Somewhere" from the musical West Side Story, the shows used projections filmed by the artist Sam Taylor-Wood. Pet Shop Boys would later work with Sam Taylor-Wood again: in 1998, they recorded a version of "Je t'aime... moi non plus", originally by Serge Gainsbourg, with her, and in 2003 they covered the Donna Summer track "Love to Love You Baby" and gave it a limited edition release credited to Kiki Kokova, a pseudonym used by Taylor-Wood for this project.

The majority of 1998 was spent with a series of live dates and minor releases, including a charity album of Noel Coward songs called Twentieth Century Blues. The album included Pet Shop Boys' version of "Sail Away" along with songs performed by Elton John, Texas, Marianne Faithfull, The Divine Comedy, Suede, Damon Albarn, Vic Reeves and Robbie Williams. Tennant also co-produced the Williams track and provided backing vocals for Elton John. Tennant also provided backing vocals on Robbie Williams' "No Regrets" single along with Neil Hannon from The Divine Comedy. Meanwhile, the band switched managers again as Carrington resigned and was succeeded by Mitch Clark who had previously worked for EMI International as Head of Promotion.[9]

During this time, Pet Shop Boys also began to work with playwright Jonathan Harvey on a stage musical project. In 1999, many of the tracks recorded ended up on the duo's seventh studio album Nightlife which also included the singles "I don't know what you want but I can't give it any more", "New York City boy" and "You only tell me you love me when you're drunk" — as well a duet with Kylie Minogue, "In denial", about a father (Tennant) coming out to his daughter (Minogue). Minogue later performed the track live during her 2005 "Showgirl" tour, singing to a pre-recorded Neil Tennant. This is not the first time that Pet Shop Boys have worked with Minogue. In 1994, Pet Shop Boys wrote a song for inclusion on her Kylie Minogue album. "Falling" was based around an unreleased remix of "Go West" with new lyrics by Tennant. However, Minogue and her record company did not like the production sound of Pet Shop Boys' demo, and asked Farley & Heller to produce the track. 1999 ended with a world tour, this time with the stage sets designed by architect Zaha Hadid. They continued to work on their musical during 2000 and in May they started workshopping the project and finalising the plot and songs to be used.

The musical, Closer to Heaven, opened at the Arts Theatre in London in 2001 with financial backing from Andrew Lloyd Webber's Really Useful Group. Reviews were mixed and, although the run was initially extended, it closed earlier than expected, due to poor ticket sales, in October 2001. Around the time of the London closure, Tennant said that they were in talks to take the musical to various locations in Europe (particularly Germany which is a big market for Pet Shop Boys) and to take it to New York. Nothing further has been issued by Pet Shop Boys or Really Useful Group regarding these performances; in 2005, a series of performances were done in the Brisbane Powerhouse, Australia, though they were independent to Pet Shop Boys and Really Useful Group.

Variety: Release and Battleship Potemkin (2002-2005)
After the mixed fortunes of Closer to Heaven, Pet Shop Boys returned to the studio to start work on their eighth studio album. After toying with genres including hip-hop, they went for a stripped back acoustic sound as a complete change to the over-the-top dance music of the musical. In 2002, they released Release. Most of the tracks were produced by the duo themselves and many of the tracks featured Johnny Marr on guitar. The first single, "Home and dry" featured a video directed by Wolfgang Tillmans, consisting entirely of footage of mice filmed in the London Underground. The follow-up single, "I get along", had a video filmed by Bruce Weber and following this they embarked on another world tour, although this time it was a stripped back affair with no dancers, backing singers, costumes or lavish sets.

A third single, "London", was only released in Germany, at the request of EMI Germany. It was never planned for release in the UK, although a promotional video was shot by the distinguished photographer Martin Parr and it was serviced to some UK radio stations. Following a live stint on the John Peel show on Radio 1, Pet Shop Boys released Disco 3 in February 2003. The album followed their previous Disco albums, but this one also included new songs as well as remixes.

In 2003, Pet Shop Boys launched two new labels, Olde English Vinyl and Lucky Kunst, their Spaghetti label being defunct. The first release on Olde English Vinyl was Atomizer's "Hooked on Radiation", followed by Pete Burns' "Jack and Jill Party" in 2004. The only Lucky Kunst release to date is Kiki Kokova's version of "Love to love you baby". They also remixed Yoko Ono's "Walking on Thin Ice" in 2003 and Rammstein's "Mein Teil" in 2004. Another new manager, David Dorrell, was brought on board to replace Clark.[10]

In November 2003, Pet Shop Boys released a second greatest hits album PopArt with two new singles "Miracles" and "Flamboyant".
Battleship Potemkin live in Trafalgar Square, September 2004
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Battleship Potemkin live in Trafalgar Square, September 2004

In September 2004, Pet Shop Boys appeared at a free concert in Trafalgar Square in London where they performed with the Dresdner Sinfoniker orchestra a new soundtrack to accompany the seminal 1925 silent film Battleship Potemkin. There were four further live performances of the work with the Dresdner Sinfoniker in Germany in September 2005, and the Battleship Potemkin soundtrack was released on September 5, 2005.

In November 2004, Pet Shop Boys played at the Prince's Trust concert called "Produced by Trevor Horn", a festival with artists who worked with famous British producer Trevor Horn. Other artists included Grace Jones, ABC, Seal and Frankie Goes To Hollywood.

In 2005, Pet Shop Boys was selected as the headline act for the Moscow Live 8 concert in Red Square. They were received extremely well by the crowd in Moscow. Also in 2005, Pet Shop Boys was asked to put together the twentieth release to the Back to Mine series, an ongoing anthology showcasing artists' favourite music selections, with an emphasis on afterhours chill out music. As a condition, Tennant and Lowe were given one disc each, whereas all previous and releases in the series were comprised of only a single disc per group. (See Back to Mine: Pet Shop Boys.)

Basically: Fundamental (2006 onwards)

Pet Shop Boys began 2006 remixing Madonna's single, "Sorry", for release in February. The single reached number one in the UK and Pet Shop Boys' remix included new back-up vocals performed by Tennant. Madonna subsequently used the Pet Shop Boys' remix, including Tennant's vocals, in her 2006 world tour production.

In April, Pet Shop Boys released a new single, "I'm with Stupid", a commentary on the relationship between George W. Bush and Tony Blair. The promo video featured Matt Lucas and David Walliams, better known as the team behind Little Britain. Lucas and Walliams portray Tennant and Lowe, parodying two of the duo's previous videos, "Go West" and "Can you forgive her?". The ninth Pet Shop Boys studio album, Fundamental, followed in May. The album was produced by Trevor Horn, who Pet Shop Boys had previously worked with on "Left to my own devices" in 1988. The album was also released with a limited edition remix album called Fundamentalism, which included a version of "In private", a song originally written and produced by Pet Shop Boys for Dusty Springfield, as a duet with Elton John and "Fugitive", a new track produced by Richard X.

The week that 'Fundamental' was a released, a documentary Pet Shop Boys - A Life In Pop was broadcast on Channel 4 and directed by George Scott and produced by Nick de Grunwald. The original broadcast was an hour long. In October 2006, a significantly expanded version lasting 175 minutes was released on DVD. The liner notes explain, 'From their trailblazing first single 'West End girls' to their current position as Britains foremost pop duo, A Life In Pop traces every ground-breaking step in the 20-year career of the Pet Shop Boys. Starting in the respective home towns in the north of England, Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe retrace their remarkable journey in their own words. The film features some previously unseen live performances, rare television appearances (including their first ever from Belgium in 1984), and interviews with famous fans, collaborators and colleagues including Robbie Williams, Brandon Flowers, Tim Rice-Oxley, Jake Shears and Bruce Weber. A Life In Pop is a fascinating in-depth documentary film chronicling the Pet Shop Boys' enduring success.'

The second single to be taken from the album was "Minimal". The duo filmed the video to the single in Paris with Dan Cameron. The single was the first of theirs to be playlisted by London's biggest radio station Capital Radio in a decade.

Between June 15 and September 10, 2006, Pet Shop Boys played a series of concert dates across Europe mainly at assorted festivals and outdoor venues. These included two dates at The Tower of London on 28 and 29 June. These dates also included performances of Battleship Potemkin in Germany and Spain. On May 1, 2006, "Potemkin" was also performed at the Swan Hunter shipyard in Newcastle-upon-Tyne with Pet Shop Boys accompanied by the Northern Sinfonia orchestra.

On 3 October 2006, the long-delayed U.S. release of their PopArt hits package was issued (slightly renamed PopArt: The Hits) by Capitol Records.

Pet Shop Boys have also worked with Robbie Williams on his new album Rudebox. They have produced two tracks for Rudebox: a cover version of "We're the Pet Shop Boys" written by My Robot Friend (which they have also recorded themselves, and released as a B-side to "Miracles" in 2003) and "She's Madonna", a duet with Tennant allegedly about Guy Ritchie's affair with Tania Strecker prior to his relationship with Madonna.

On October 10, 2006, Pet Shop Boys embarked on an American tour in Montreal which took them through Canada, the USA and Mexico concluding on November 16th. Further concert dates in Europe, South America and Australia are under discussion for 2007.

On October 16, Catalogue from Thames & Hudson, a 336-page hardcover book written by Philip Hoare and Chris Heath, detailing their entire visual output (photography, as well as the design of record, video, tour, book and fan club magazine) from 1984 to 2004 was released. Neil Tennant comments in the book, "In the beginning we made a decision - and it was in our EMI contract - that that we would have control over how everything worked; that obviously the songs mattered hugely, but the way they were presented was going to matter hugely as well; and that we were never going to give up on that." Pet Shop Boys will be supporting the release of the book with signings in London and New York City.

Also on October 16th, the third single from Fundamental, "Numb" was released. It was written by Diane Warren, and is the only song on the album not written by the Boys.

On October 23, 2006, Concrete (originally titled "Concert" but changed at the last minute to the originally-planned title) was released. It is a double-CD of the complete Mermaid Theatre concert with the BBC Concert Orchestra, featuring guests Rufus Wainwright, Frances Barber and Robbie Williams. A 90 minute "director's cut" of the concert aired on BBC 6 Music on August 28, 2006. It was originally scheduled for release on September 25, but delayed due to "manufacturing and contractual reasons".[11].

A small exhibition of portraits of Pet Shop Boys opened in the Bookshop Gallery of London's National Portrait Gallery on October 30, 2006 and runs to February 28, 2007.

Pet Shop Boys will conclude 2006 and commence 2007 by performing at the Concert in the Gardens at Edinburgh's Hogmanay party.

Discography

Sexuality
Neil Tennant is openly gay, although he refused to confirm rumours about his sexuality in the 1980s until finally coming out shortly after the release of 1993's Very in Attitude, a UK gay lifestyle magazine. Lowe, meanwhile, has remained tight-lipped despite making several suggestive remarks on chat shows. The duo are sometimes incorrectly assumed to be a couple (in the 1990 biography Pet Shop Boys, Literally, Tennant recalls that even their ex-manager, Tom Watkins, was under this impression for a time).

Pet Shop Boys are seen as significant figures in gay culture for such songs as "Can you forgive her?", "It's a sin" (for which gay director Derek Jarman produced the video), "New York City Boy" and their cover of Village People's "Go West". They have written a song about a young male fan spending a night with a rapper, based on Eminem, called "The night I fell in love" and a song about coming out, "Metamorphosis". Their 1990s single "Being boring" dealt with the gay experience and the devastation wrought by the AIDS crisis; the song, and its supporting video filmed by Bruce Weber, remains one of their most popular. However, Neil Tennant has stated many times that his lyrics are not specifically gay. Many of their songs are written from an ambiguous view point that can be taken any way the listener perceives it, and this goes some way to explain why a large segment of their die-hard fans are heterosexual.

Pet Shop Boys have performed and worked with many artists considered to be gay icons such as Elton John, Liza Minnelli, Dusty Springfield and Kylie Minogue. Pet Shop Boys attempted to organise and perform in a planned 2001 tour of out gay musicians, entitled 'Wotapalava'. However, the plans were later put on hold and the idea seems to have been discarded.

Influence

Guns N' Roses singer Axl Rose was unapologetic in his praise of the Behaviour album as one of his all-time favourites, claiming that "November Rain" was partly inspired by album track "My October Symphony".

As of 2003, Pet Shop Boys were ranked by Billboard's Joel Whitburn (in his book Billboard's Hot Dance/Disco 1974-2003) as the number-four most successful act on the U.S. Dance/Club Play charts, behind only Madonna, Janet Jackson and Donna Summer.

In October 2005, a Swedish tribute band called West End Girls had a number-three hit single in their home country with a cover version of "Domino dancing". In January 2006 they released their version of "West End girls", and an album was released in June. Pet Shop Boys also have several tribute bands in the form of Birmingham-based Pet Shop Noise who have been performing locally for many years, and Seattle-based West End Boys.

Madonna's album Confessions on a Dance Floor, released November 2005, includes a track called "Jump" which has close similarities to "West End girls". An interview at www.popjustice.co.uk with Stuart Price, who produced Madonna's album, revealed the track "Jump" was a complete Chris Lowe inspiration. Apparently, while recording the album, Madonna blurted out at one point, "Pet Shop Boys! I fucking love them!". Pet Shop Boys remixed "Sorry", the second single from the album. Their mix has proven to be a favourite, as even Madonna is using their version in her 2006 Confessions tour. The history between Madonna and Pet Shop Boys goes back to 1988 with the song "Heart". It was composed by the duo with the idea of pitching it to Madonna to sing--but they were too shy to call her and offer her the song--so they recorded it themselves. The song ended up going to number one in the UK charts. Later, in 1991, Madonna was referenced in a tongue-in-cheek lyric in the song "DJ Culture," right after Madonna and Sean Penn had divorced. Tennant writes, "Like Liz before Betty / She after Sean / suddenly you're missing / then you're reborn". Tennant refers to the 'reinvention' Madonna was going through at the time. Madonna also paid tribute to Pet Shop Boys at the 2006 Brit Awards naming them as one of the British artists who had influenced her music, in her acceptance speech after being presented with the 'Best International Female' award by Neil Tennant.

Actor David Tennant, who currently plays Doctor Who, took his stage name from Neil Tennant. David's real surname is MacDonald, but he needed a stage name for Equity.

American cartoonist Thomas K. Dye, most famous for creating the satrical webcomic Newshounds, first attempted to make a comic book called The Boy Shop Pets, so called because the characters were animals. It was written between November 1991 to January 1992, but did not last.

See also

* Best selling music artists - World's top selling music artists chart.
* List of number-one hits (United States)
* List of artists who reached number one on the Hot 100 (U.S.)
* List of number-one dance hits (United States)
* List of artists who reached number one on the U.S. Dance chart
* List of artists who reached number one in Ireland