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.”
‘Before’ is released in 12-inch single format in the U.S.
The official PSB website announces that a new ‘Greatest Hits’ collection will be released in the autumn.
Chris and Neil make a surprise guest appearance with Yoko Ono at the Meltdown Festival in London. They perform the PSB mix of Yoko’s ‘Walking on Thin Ice.’
They perform in Copenhagen.
In the wee hours of the morning, the Boys perform as the closing headline act at the Hultsfred Festival in Sweden—a show marred somewhat by pouring rain.
Spinning off from ‘Where the Wild Things Are,’ Neil and Miranda Cooper turn it into a different song altogether that they call ‘Dreaming.’ It will soon evolve into ‘More Than a Dream.’
Twenty years and three days since their Performance show in Dublin, the Boys are back there again on their current tour with Take That. This evening, however, they’re free, so they visit a pub and enjoy a few beers with friends.
In spite of what Neil describes on their website as ‘very heavy rain,’ the Pet Shop Boys perform their Super Tour show this evening at Bergenfest in Bergen, Norway.
They continue work on ‘Love Is the Law.’
As the Boys describe it on their website, it’s ‘a misty, moisty evening’ in Oslo, Norway, where they perform their Dreamworld Tour show this evening at the OverOslo Music Festival.
They perform at OVO Arena Wembley, London’s second-largest indoor arena after the O2.
2025: Amidst unusually hot weather even by local standards, the Boys kick off the Summer 2025 leg of their ongoing Dreamworld Tour this evening with a performance at the Icónica Sevilla Festival in Seville, Spain.