Latest Release
- 20 AUG 2024
- 5 Songs
- Please: Further Listening 1984-1986 (Deluxe Edition) · 1986
- Actually: Further Listening 1987-1988 (Deluxe) [2018 Remaster] · 1987
- Discography: The Complete Singles Collection · 1987
- Actually (2018 Remaster) · 1987
- PopArt: The Hits · 1993
- Actually (2018 Remaster) · 1987
- Please: Further Listening 1984-1986 (Deluxe Edition) · 1986
- Behaviour: Further Listening 1990-1991 (Deluxe Edition) · 1990
- Behaviour: Further Listening 1990-1991 (Deluxe Edition) · 1990
- Actually (2018 Remaster) · 1987
Essential Albums
- Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe have said that when the Pet Shop Boys’ second album, Actually, was released, they mainly understood it to be about Thatcherism. Written during the mid 1980s and released in 1987—the year Thatcher began her third term as prime minister—Actually is a prickly record that captures a maudlin national consciousness. But the Pet Shop Boys dress up that dour mood in precisely sequenced, discotheque-indebted synth-pop. While the band’s debut album, Please, had its moments of bleakness, there was a romantic optimism that ran through it. On Actually, the overarching atmosphere is far more scathing. The robotic “Shopping” draws comparisons between vapid consumerism and the British government’s willingness to sell off nationalised industries and social housing (“I heard it in the House of Commons,” Tennant sings. “Everything’s for sale.”) The repetitive chug of “Rent”, meanwhile, turns salacious sexual transaction into something resigned and monotonous. And “King’s Cross”,with its sumptuous and slightly baroque production, encapsulates the despondency of the era; as Tennant sings with a sigh: “Wake up in the morning and there’s still no guarantee.” At the heart of Actually are three songs about the HIV/AIDS crisis and the rise of anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric. While “Hit Music” appears to be a satirical look at banal commercialised pop songs, hidden in the lyrics is Tennant’s mourning at the loss of hedonistic queer nightlife (“Live and die, it’s all that we know.”) The pomp of “It’s a Sin”, arguably one of the Pet Shop Boys’ most recognisable hits, masks the pain of repressed sexuality and dogmatic bigotry (“When I look back upon my life/It’s always with a sense of shame.”) Finally, “It Couldn’t Happen Here”, with its initial sense of soft naivety, morphs into a gutting elegy for the lives lost because of HIV/AIDS, one that aches with regret (“I may be wrong, I thought we said/‘It couldn’t happen here’”). Levity comes in the form of “What Have I Done to Deserve This?”, in which Tennant and Lowe revive a career-declining Dusty Springfield, and “Heart”, an absolute floor-filling romp of song that was, according to the band, written with Madonna in mind. It’s all proof of the Pet Shop Boys’ ability to serve you socio-economic commentary and straight-up pop perfection at the same time.
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Artist Playlists
- Tennant and Lowe have delivered incisive, wistful synth-pop for over 35 years.
- Lean back and relax with some of their mellowest cuts.
Live Albums
Compilations
- 1995
More To Hear
- Hanuman Welch revisits Pet Shop Boys’synth-heavy smash hit Actually.
- The British artist FaceTimes, music from the Pet Shop Boys.
- Q-Tip and The Crew spin Depeche Mode, Pet Shop Boys, and Prince.
- Elton John toasts 50 episodes of Rocket Hour, plus Neil Tennant joins as his guest.
About Pet Shop Boys
The duo of Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe have been crafting witty, hooky synth-pop since a chance meeting at a hi-fi shop in 1981. Tennant’s reserved vocals and Lowe’s crisp instrumentation added a sardonic existentialism to New Wave. Their first single, the 1984 chronicle of urban life “West End Girls”, became a minor club hit before being reworked with producer Stephen Hague; the revamped version became an international hit a year later. In the decades that followed, Pet Shop Boys would be revered as one of synth-pop’s most beloved acts, with songs like the storming yet irony-tinged “Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots of Money)” and the winking examination of money and love “Rent” crossing over from clubs to mainstream radio. Pet Shop Boys had a publicly coy relationship with queerness; although Tennant, who came out in 1994, eschewed gender-specific language in his lyrics, the duo leaned into camp with gusto, producing and writing for Liza Minnelli’s 1989 pop return Results, giving the Village People’s “Go West” a muscular makeover and scoring a global hit with the feisty Dusty Springfield collaboration “What Have I Done To Deserve This?” Their discography, stretching over four decades, is one of pop’s finest, pairing keen observations with irresistible hooks even as the world around the club changes shape.
- ORIGIN
- London, England
- FORMED
- 19 August 1981
- GENRE
- Pop