In the opening minutes of the New Year, the Pet Shop Boys appear on British TV as special guests on the now traditional televised New Year’s Eve pop star performance, this year by Years and Years’ Olly Alexander at London’s Riverside Studios. They joined him for two songs, “It’s a sin” and “Dreamland”. (In a more normal year this would have been a live broadcast, but due to the pandemic it has been recorded several weeks earlier, on December 8.)
On March 22, “Purple Zone”, a single credited to Soft Cell and Pet Shop Boys, is released. The song had originally been recorded by Soft Cell alone for their forthcoming Happiness Not Included album but after the Pet Shop Boys expressed enthusiasm for the as-yet-unreleased song after hearing Soft Cell perform it at the Hammersmith Apollo in November 2021, an initial invitation to remix the song led to its reworking as a collaboration, and to a joint video shoot in a south London pub. “We’ve always acknowledged Soft Cell,” notes Chris. “It felt like a real moment,” says Neil.
On May 10, after two pandemic-related postponements, the Pet Shop Boys’ Dreamworld: the greatest hits tour – originally scheduled to begin in May 2020 – finally opens in Milan.
On June 26, the Pet Shop Boys perform for the third time at the Glastonbury festival. For the first seven songs, a technical glitch forces Chris to perform hidden behind a screen, but eventually he is revealed. “After that,” says Neil, “it was a real adrenaline rush.”
On September 17 in Toronto the Pet Shop Boys play the first of 13 co-headlining shows with New Order across North America on the Unity tour. The idea that the two groups might tour together in this way was one that Chris has floated some years before: “I just thought it would be something I’d like to go and see.” (The tour’s eventual name, Unity, was Bernard Sumner’s counter-proposal to Chris’s initial suggestion, United.) The two acts alternated opening and closing the show, both performing, as New Order preferred, full ninety-minute sets; before, and in between, Paul Oakenfold DJ-ed. “It felt like,” says Neil, “to use our age-old word, an event. It felt like an event for us and for the audience.”
On December 31 the Pet Shop Boys perform at the Hogmanay celebrations in Edinburgh. Their set includes a new version of “Paninaro”, its first performance for thirteen years.
Neil attends an invitation-only live set by Depeche Mode at a South London TV studio. The DM performance, in which they debut tracks from their soon-to-be-released album Ultra, is videotaped for later broadcast on MTV.
Chris begins work in a London studio (sans Neil, but assisted by Pete Gleadall) on the music for ‘Nine Out of Ten.’
The Boys tape their appearance on Later… with Jools Holland, to be aired two days from now. They perform four songs.
They work on several tracks, including their first attempt at the old Madness song ‘My Girl.’
The CNN website runs a story about how the Pet Shop Boys had rejected a recent request by PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) that they change their name to the ‘Rescue Shelter Boys’ as a gesture toward educating the public about the downside of pet shops. CNN even makes it the subject of a poll on the home page of their website.
Chris and Neil attend Boy George’s show this evening at London’s Leicester Square Theatre. Afterwards George writes on Twitter, ‘Lovely to see the Pet Shop Boys tonite. Neil is looking über well and Chris is still a lovely rascal!’