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 perform at an outdoor festival in Turku, Finland.
They perform their Battleship Potemkin score in the gardens of the Royal Palace of La Granja, Segovia, Spain.
Neil records his lead vocal for ‘King of Rome.’
The Pet Shop Boys make their first-ever Taiwan concert appearance, performing at the Twinkle Rock Festival in Taipei.
Despite getting stuck in heavy traffic on their way to the show, Chris and Neil conclude their summer tour as the ‘special guests’ of Take That with a performance at Munich’s Olympic Stadium. Earlier in the day they had begun work on a new song, ‘A Face Like That.’
‘Vocal,’ with no fewer than eight remixes, is released today as both a CD single and a digital bundle.
A busy day at London’s RAK Studios working with Stuart Price on ‘Burning the Heather.’ Bernard Butler arrives at the studio in the afternoon to record guitar parts for the song. Along the way, the Boys bump into Noel Gallagher and spend some time chatting with him.