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 Pet Shop Boys perform in Bern, Switzerland.
They play before Neil’s hometown crowd in Newcastle.
Chris and Neil attend a live performance by the Paddingtons at the Water Rats Theatre in London.
The Boys perform at the Melt Festival in Gräfenhainichen, Germany.
An NME online gossip column claims that Neil had ‘snubbed’ Babyshambles singer Pete Doherty backstage after the Boys’ recent ‘T in the Park’ show—an allegation that is immediately denounced as ‘utter rubbish’ on the official PSB website. Meanwhile, on this evening off from the Pandemonium Tour, Neil attends a performance in Manchester of Rufus Wainwright’s new French-language opera Prima Donna, which had made its world debut the preceding weekend.
They perform in Zurich, Switzerland.
The Boys begin work on a song titled ‘I Will Fall.’ Neil later notes that it’s the last song they wrote for the album Super, although it doesn’t actually end up appearing on that album.
Neil travels to Sheffield to see the new ‘jukebox show’ Dusty — The Dusty Springfield Musical, written by the Boys’ sometime collaborator Jonathan Harvey.
The Pet Shop Boys make their first-ever concert appearance in the Canary Islands at Santa Cruz de Tenerife.