History

On August 25 the Pet Shop Boys appear as themselves on the long-running BBC Radio series The Archers (it has been broadcast for over sixty years and has over 17,000 episodes); they save the day by stepping in to headline the inaugural Ambridge music festival, Loxfest. On the show, one of the characters, Linda Snell, describes what to expect: “The taller one’s Neil Tennant. He’s the singer. He’s very charming and talkative. Chris Lowe is the one with the dark glasses. He’s a bit quiet – a man of mystery”. Inevitably, her expectations are confounded.

On July 23 the world premiere of the Pet Shop Boys’ A man from the future, their piece about Alan Turing, written for orchestra, choir, electronics and a narrator, takes place at the Royal Albert Hall as part of the BBC Proms. The narration is by the actress Juliet Stevenson, the orchestration is by Sven Helbig, and performed by the BBC Concert Orchestra and the 18-piece choir the BBC Singers, conducted by Dominic Wheeler. Neil joins the choir onstage and Chris plays “electronics”. The Pet Shop Boys’ interest in Turing was first triggered when Chris saw a Channel 4 docu-drama about him. A man from the future tells the story of Turing’s life and work and is based on the Andrew Hodges 1981 book, Alan Turing: The Enigma. (Hodges has collaborated with the Pet Shop Boys on the work, and, as chance would have it, is a Pet Shop Boys fan whose 2008 book One To Nine: The Inner Life Of Numbers includes multiples references to Pet Shop Boys songs and lyrics). Originally it ended with Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s apology to Turing, who was hounded because of his homosexuality and killed himself, but after they finished the piece, the Queen formally pardoned Turing so they incorporated that too. Before A man from the future the evening begins with the first ever live performance of “Overture to Performance”, the orchestral interpolation and interweaving of various Pet Shop Boys songs by Richard Niles, the recorded version of which began the show on the Pet Shop Boys’ 1991 Performance tour. It is followed by Four songs in A minor, four Pet Shop Boys songs – “Love is a catastrophe”, “Later tonight”, “Vocal” and “Rent” — arranged by the film composer Angelo Badalamenti and sung by Chrissie Hynde. The last of these, the only pre-existing arrangement (it was done for Liza Minnelli’s Results) is performed as a duet with Neil. The entire concert is broadcast live on BBC Radio 3. 

On July 14, only ten months after their previous album, the Pet Shop Boys release Electric, an album with a strong dance emphasis produced by Stuart Price: “It’s called Electric because that’s what it is – electronic music that we hope is exciting.” At Stuart Price’s urging, the songs were recorded in alphabetical order, and remained in the same order on the finished album. (“Love is a bourgeois construct” was originally called “Bourgeois”.) “It felt like Electric was a sort of ‘rebooting’ of the Pet Shop Boys,” says Neil, “reminding ourselves that we came into this whole thing because we liked electronic music. Until this album we’d never been electronic purists – there have always been other instruments and orchestras and things like that.”

On April 18, a limited edition twelve-inch single containing two new versions of “Fluorescent”, re-recorded with additional lyrics, is released for Record Store Day. The original version was the final song written for Electric: “about a model like Kate Moss, a very glamorous person”.

On April 12 and 19 the Pet Shop Boys make their first, and second, appearance at the Coachella festival in California – the first evening performing despite a sandstorm. 

A video is posted on YouTube in which a speech, a response to some specific examples of contemporary Irish homophobia, that was recently given by an Irish drag queen, Panti Bliss (real name Rory O’Neill), is set to music by the Pet Shop Boys on a new track, “Oppressive (the best gay possible”. 

On September 1, “Love is a bourgeois construct” is released as a single, severely edited from its album version. It is a song inspired by Michael Nyman’s “Chasing Sheep Is Best Left To Shepherds”. “I often listen to that on the train going up to Preston,” Chris explains. “It just goes so well with the movement of the train going through the countryside.” Its title was inspired by a conversation between two characters in a book Neil had been reading, David Lodge’s novel Nice Work. “But the song doesn’t follow the story of the David Lodge book at all,” says Neil. “I imagine a well-off, middle-class man who works in the city – it’s another heterosexual song – and he wants to have a lovely life together with his wife or girlfriend but then she leaves him and suddenly his bourgeois life becomes meaningless. And he looks back to when he was at university – he was rather left-wing in those days – and he’s rationalising to himself why he’s going to give up work, and sit and watch the weeds grow in the garden, have takeaway food and hang out with disreputable people on the Goldhawk Road. Because of course he lives in one of the posh bits of Shepherd’s Bush. But you realise in the last line that he’s totally pathetic because he’s expecting her to come back to him.”

On October 21, the Pet Shop Boys attend the Q Awards in London to receive the Outstanding Contribution to Music award. It is presented to them by Robbie Williams who describes them as “my favourite band” and says that “they designed the blueprint of the perfect pop record”. (In return, the Pet Shop Boys present Robbie Williams with the Q Idol Award.)

On November 4, “Thursday” is released a single. The song features the rapper Example, who both raps and sings on it. It also includes Chris’s voice, reciting a list of days. “I did it and then of course instantly regretted it,” he says. The lyric is about a couple breaking up. “I’ve noticed,” says Neil, “that in a lot of my songs women are always ruthless and decisive and men are always pathetic.” The video, directed by Justyn Field, shows the Pet Shop Boys in Shanghai at night. 

On New Year’s Eve the Pet Shop Boys headline Edinburgh’s “Hogmanay In The Gardens” celebration, following the last-minute cancellation of their performance on the same day in 2006 due to severe weather conditions.