Last night’s concert with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra was a wonderful experience for us. The orchestra played with such luxurious power and conviction, conducted by Dominic Wheeler, and the Manchester Chamber Choir brought ethereal beauty to, for instance, “Miracles” and “He dreamed of machines” (from our new piece about Alan Turing). To hear Johnny Marr playing the guitar riff from “This must be the place I waited years to leave” was a real thrill so many years after he played on the original record; his acoustic guitar playing on “Breathing space” was gorgeous. Other highlights for me were performing live for the first time “It couldn’t happen here”, “The survivors” and “For all of us”. Sven Helbig’s orchestral arrangements were both magnificent and subtle: “New York City boy” was returned to Broadway; “He dreamed of machines” had a pale beauty. Many thanks to everyone at the BBC, Parlophone and our management and tour personnel for making it happen, to Pete Gleadall for programming and to Jo Whiley for introducing it. The concert can be heard on BBC Radio 2 tonight at 8 pm. I hope you enjoy it. Neil x (Photograph by Kate Southall/BBC.)
Composer Mark Springer’s new album, “Sleep of Reason”, which includes a collaboration with Neil Tennant, is out now and available on double vinyl, CD and digitally at the link below.
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Tickets for Pet Shop Boys’ “Dreamworld” show at the Royal Sandringham Estate on 14th August are now on sale at the link below.
I loved performing three songs at last night’s London Soundtrack Festival concert at the Roundhouse in London with the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra arranged and conducted by Anne Dudley. In this photo Jake Shears and I are duetting on “Rent”. I also sang “Nothing has been proved” and “Everybody’s Talkin’” (from “Midnight Cowboy”). A great experience. Neil x
Photo: Julie Edwards
“Phantoms and Monsters”, composed by Mark Springer, with Neil Tennant on vocals and the Sacconi Quartet on strings is out now digitally at the link below.
This quintet piece is the opening track of Mark Springer’s forthcoming new album, “Sleep of Reason”, which will be released along with a solo piano piece and a quartet piece on 25th April 2025.
Neil discusses Pet Shop Boys’ relationship with Russia in an interview with the independent Russian newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, now also published in The Guardian. Links below.
I just met the composer Mark Springer to get some CDs of his beautiful work, “Sleep of Reason”, the first part of which I sing on. It’s always exciting to get finished copies of a new record and this looks very handsome! It’s released on April 25th. Neil x
Pet Shop Boys have remixed a song by Primal Scream, “Innocent Money”, and you can hear it now at the You Tube link below and on streaming services. More information at the NME link below.
Pet Shop Boys are among more than 1,000 musicians who have come together to release “Is This What We Want?”, an album protesting the UK government’s proposed changes to copyright law, which would allow artificial intelligence companies to build their products using other people’s copyrighted work — music, artworks, text, and more — without a licence.
The album consists of recordings of empty studios and performance spaces and can be heard at the link below. All profits are being donated to the charity Help Musicians.
Just over a year ago the Russian opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, died in prison in Russia. We wrote and demoed this song in the last few days and dedicate it to his memory and his cause. Neil and Chris x