On April 22, the Pet Shop Boys musical Closer to Heaven is performed in London for the first time in fourteen years, in a sold-out month-long run at The Union Theatre. (It will return for a further five weeks beginning on October 21.). For this revival, at the Pet Shop Boys’ request, the musical’s original final number, “Positive role model”, is replaced by “Vocal”.
On August 15, the final date of the much-extended Electric tour – which began in March, 2013 – takes place at the Flow Festival in Helsinki. The tour has visited over forty countries.
On December 2, the Pet Shop Boys appear at MAMA – the Mnet Asian Music Awards – in Hong Kong. They are given the Worldwide Inspiration award and play a lengthy live medley, joined for their final two songs, “What have I done to deserve this?” and “Vocal”, by the K‑Pop artist f(x). At the organisers’ request, they wear the Electric tour straw jackets for, possibly, the final time.
The Boys take part in filming the ‘Se A Vida E’ video with Bruce Weber at the Wet ‘n Wild theme park in Orlando, Florida.
While Neil and Chris are still working on ‘Psychological,’ their friend Sam Taylor-Wood invites them to meet and have lunch with actress Gwyneth Paltrow, who’s upstairs at Sam’s studio to be photographed.
Chris and Neil begin two new songs: ‘Youth’ (which soon becomes ‘Gin and Jag’) and ‘King of Rome’ (which they temporarily call ‘King of Pop’). Chris, on his own, also writes a new instrumental that he titles ‘Moronic.’ (This will later be developed into ‘The Grind’ for their ballet The Most Incredible Thing.)
Following a week-long promotional campaign teasing the public with the mysterious (and anonymous) question ‘What Is Super?’ the Pet Shop Boys reveal that Super is title of their next album, scheduled for April 1 release, and they release via digital outlets one track from the album, ‘Inner Sanctum.’