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.”
Chris and Neil perform a brief two-song set at the London Astoria.
The Performance VHS is released, as is Cicero’s Future Boy album, largely produced by PSB.
Neil records his vocal for ‘Metamorphosis.’
Bilingual debuts on the U.S. album chart.
The Boys conclude an extended period of relative silence with a post on their official website, stating that they’ve been busy in the studio for the past few weeks writing new songs—sixteen of them, to be exact. They expect to begin recording them in November for a likely new album release in 2012.
It’s a big PSB weekend in the States. Chris and Neil are interviewed on today’s edition of World Café on National Public Radio. Also, all weekend, the Pet Shop Boys ‘take over’ Sirius XM satellite radio station ‘1st Wave,’ with a song from their latest album Electric played every hour as well as a ‘Town Hall’ and song intros by Neil and Chris. And they appear in concert this evening in Chicago.
They conclude their Electric Tour (though as they say on their website, ‘for the moment’) with a show in Taipei, Taiwan.
After having spent the previous night in Laguna Beach, Chris and Neil decide to visit the Richard Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda on their way back to Los Angeles.
The Boys perform this evening at New York’s legendary Madison Square Garden.