On May 2 the Pet Shop Boys appear at Heaven nightclub in London, playing a four song set as part of Can You Bear It?, a benefit for Dainton Connell’s family. For the final song they are joined by Suggs and Carl from Madness, in rambunctious high spirits, to perform a dance version of Madness’s “My Girl”: “It was a very emotional night”.
On October 27 a Pet Shop Boys-produced single by the British artist Sam Taylor-Wood, “I’m in love with a German film star”, is released on the cult German dance label Kompakt. It is the Pet Shop Boys’ third collaboration with Sam Taylor-Wood though the previous one was released under the pseudonym Kiki Kokova. The song is an electronic reinterpretation of the 1981 single by the Passions, a suggestion of Neil’s.
This year’s annual Christmas single from the Killers — “Joseph (Better You Than Me)” — is originally planned as a collaboration between The Killers and Elton John. Neil gets involved after Brandon Flowers asks for help with the lyric; in the end Neil’s short section of guide vocal for the lyric he contributes will remain in the final song when it is made available for download.
The Pet Shop Boys appear in concert in Zurich, Switzerland.
Chris and Neil bring their Fundamental Tour to Hamburg, Germany.
2008: Neil appears at the Brighton Festival for a ‘discover the man behind the music’ talk/interview session with writer and cultural commentator Michael Bracewell.
Neil attends a performance of the new ballet Cleopatra (scored by Claude-Michel Schönberg, best known for Les Miserables and Miss Saigon) at London’s Sadler’s Wells Theatre, where his and Chris’s own ballet The Most Incredible Thing had debuted two months before. On this same day, both Concrete and Battleship Potemkin are released in the U.S. several years after their release in many other countries.
Chris and Neil arrive in Asunción—their first visit to Paraguay—for their Electric Tour concert there the following evening. They hold a press conference shortly after their arrival and expect to do some sightseeing during their stay.
In the studio with Pete Gleadall, the Boys continue working on the Musik tracks. Afterward they meet with Hanif Kureishi and Nikolai Foster of Leicester Curve Theatre to discuss writing music for a new stage production of My Beautiful Laundrette.
The Boys bring their Dreamworld Tour show to Brussels.