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 Brussels, Belgium.
Neil and Chris drive to Croydon to visit the Brit School, which is funded by the U.K. record industry and the government. As they note on their official website, it is traditional for winners of the BRITS ‘Outstanding Contribution to Music’ Award—which the Boys will soon be receiving—to pay a visit there.
They visit the Beverly Center, a huge eight-storey shopping mall in Los Angeles. On this same day, the second PSB b‑sides/bonus tracks collection, Format, is released in the U.K.
Neil’s duet with Chrissie Hynde on the Pretenders’ ‘Let’s Get Lost’ is released today as a single. Chrissie had given the recording its world premiere over the weekend just past on Graham Norton’s BBC Radio 2 show.
The second song from the new PSB EP Agenda, ‘On Social Media,’ debuts today.
Neil is among the attendees at this evening’s performance of Gerald Barry’s 2016 opera Alice’s Adventures Under Ground (based on Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass) at London’s Royal Opera House.