History

On February 17 Neil appears onstage with the Scissor Sisters at Koko in London at an event in support of the charity Body and Soul. He sings on the Pet Shop Boys’ “Love comes quickly” and the Scissor Sisters’ “It Can’t Come Quickly Enough”.

On February 4 Neil appears on the long-running BBC radio programme, Desert Island Discs, now in its 65^th year. His record choices are Rex Harrison’s “Why Can’t The English Teach Their Children How To Speak?”, the Beatles’ “She Loves You”, Vaughan Williams’ “Fantasia On A Theme By Thomas Tallis”, David Bowie’s “Changes”, Shannon’s “Give Me Tonight”, Billie Holiday’s “Good Morning Heartache”, Dusty Springfield’s “I Don’t Want To Hear It Anymore”, and Shostakovich’s “Symphony No 5 in D Minor”. His book choice was Balzac’s The Human Comedy, and his one luxury and DVD projector with a huge box of DVDs.

On February 11 the Grammy awards are held. The Pet Shop Boys are nominated in two categories — as Best Electronic/Dance Album for Fundamental and as Best Electronic/Dance track for “I’m with stupid” — but lose to Madonna and Justin Timberlake respectively. They do not attend.

On February 26 the Killers’ single, “Read My Mind”, is released. It contains a remix, “Read My Mind (Pet Shop Boys Stars Are Blazing Mix)”, on which they replay everything but the guitars and vocals, and on which both Chris and Neil’s voices can be heard. It is their favourite song on the second Killers album. A few months earlier, Neil had publicly queried the wisdom of Brandon Flowers’ newly-grown moustache and what it might signify. “When he was first asked about that in an interview before the album came out he said, ‘Well, I think Neil’s really going to like “Read My Mind” because we’re still writing pop songs’. And as soon as I heard the album I thought, ‘Oh, he’s right … I do like that’.”

On March 6 “She’s Madonna”, credited to Robbie Williams with Pet Shop Boys, is released as a single.

On May 14 Rufus Wainwright’s album Release The Stars is released. Neil is the album’s executive producer and appears on four of the songs.

On May 14 Cubism, a DVD of the Fundamental tour, directed by David Barnard and filmed in Mexico City on November 14, 2006, is released. They chose Mexico to film as audiences had seemed so good on their previous visits: “Also, to us it seems almost slightly incongruous: ‘Pet Shop Boys in Mexico City’.” The DVD is also accompanied by a CD of the concert.

At the Edinburgh festival an Australian musical theatre piece, Seriously, which structures a loose narrative out of an eclectic sequence of Pet Shop Boys songs has its first British performances. The Pet Shop Boys attend: “Very moving”.

On October 8 the album Disco 4 is released. Reversing the Disco series’ more usual practice, this album principally consists of mixes that the Pet Shop Boys have done for other artists: The Killers, David Bowie, Yoko Ono, Madonna and Atomizer. Also included are two of their own mixes of Pet Shop Boys songs, including a radically new version of “Integral”. A video is made of “Integral” though the song is not released as a conventional single.

On November 1 they appear at a War Child benefit at the Brixton Academy in London, a concert arranged by Keane. They perform four songs: “Rent”, “West End girls”, “Integral” and “Being boring”.