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.”
Frankie Valli’s ‘Can’t Take My Eyes Off You’—which Chris and Neil will much later turn into a medley with ‘Where the Streets Have No Name’—debuts on the U.S. singles chart.
RIAA awards a U.S. gold album to Please.
Essentially: The Pet Shop Boys Story airs this evening on BBC Radio 2.
The Pet Shop Boys are interviewed on BBC2’s The Culture Show.
The Boys’ Cubism concert DVD is released in the U.K. On the same day, they conclude the eight-city ‘German leg’ of their Fundamental Tour with a concert in Stuttgart.
Neil and Chris pay a surprise visit to São Paulo, Brazil, where they perform a brief set at the festivities commemorating the first anniversary of the launch of Sky HDTV at the Golden Hall of the World Trade Center of São Paulo.
Neil notes in his diary that he has begun reading the novel Nice Work by David Lodge. As it soon turns out, it inspires a new PSB song, ‘Love Is a Bourgeois Construct.’
Neil visits the immersive exhibition by Japanese audiovisual artist Ryoji Ikeda at The Strand in London. Afterward, on the Boys’ official website, Neil describes it as ‘extraordinary.’
Wolfgang Tillmans’s single ‘Insanely Alive,’ featuring two PSB remixes, is released today digitally and on 12-inch vinyl. Meanwhile, the Boys perform this evening in Manchester—the first of their Dreamworld Tour shows in the U.K.
The BBC2 television network devotes most of its prime-time programming this evening to the Pet Shop Boys. Among tonight’s three PSB shows is Reel Stories: Pet Shop Boys, in which Neil and Chris comment on assorted videos and performances of theirs with host Dermot O’Leary.