On March 19 two books by Chris Heath – Literally from 1990, and Pet Shop Boys versus America from 1993 – were reissued by the Penguin imprint Cornerstone, completely redesigned by Farrow design, and new introductions and afterwords written by the Pet Shop Boys and Chris Heath.
On April 21, Discovery, the film of the Pet Shop Boys 1994 South American tour – “the tour I enjoyed the most,” Chris notes – is released on DVD, accompanied by the release for the first time of a CD of their performance.
On May 7, a new Pet Shop Boys song, the ten-minute “Cricket wife”, is released on CD (accompanied by “West End girls (New lockdown version)”) with the periodical Annually 2021. “Cricket wife”, written during lockdown, began as an extended piece of music created by Chris. “My mum asked me if I would write a piece of classical music for her,” he explains. “I thought, ‘Well, I’ve got nothing else better to do.’ ‘Classical’ in inverted commas, obviously – I’m no classical composer. In the style of classical music.” When Neil received it, it struck him that it might fit a poem he had written some years before. “It’s really about my parents,” he says. “My father played cricket for many years.”
On December 26, the Pet Shop Boys host a three-hour radio show, Pet Shop Boys, Takeover, on BBC Radio 2 between 9pm and midnight, playing a selection of favourite songs; a broadcast also billed by Radio 2 as “Neil and Chris’s Unpredictable Party Playlist”. (The show has been pre-recorded on the afternoon of December 13.) The Pet Shop Boys have recorded five new jingles for the show, titled “Takeover”, “Strings”, “Beautiful”, “Boxing Day” and “Electric”, and introduce a joyously eclectic selection of music, including records by Matt Monro, Alcazar, Paul Weller (their recent remix of his song “Cosmic Fringes”), Gloria Ann Taylor, Eric Prydz, Françoise Hardy and The 1975. “We’ve only ever done radio when we can play records that we want,” says Chris. “I love doing radio. There’s something very satisfying about broadcasting to the nation.”
The Boys learn of the death of Princess Diana under very different circumstances. Neil is at home when he turns on the radio and hears the news, while Chris finds out mid-route to Ibiza for vacation.
Chris and Neil visit the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul.
The issue of The New Yorker bearing this date on its cover includes in its ‘Critic’s Notebook’ section a brief but glowing article by Sasha Frere-Jones promoting the Pet Shop Boys’ upcoming dates at the city’s Hammerstein Ballroom. The writer describes them as an ‘utterly brilliant dance-music duo… [who] are part of a great tradition of slipping intense emotions into an envelope of wit that runs straight from Oscar Wilde to Noel Coward to the Boys.’
‘Love Is a Bourgeois Construct’ is released as a single via digital bundle in Germany and several other countries in continental Europe. (It will be released in the U.K. the following day and several days later in the U.S.)
The Pet Shop Boys perform at the Bingley (U.K.) Music Live Festival.