On January 1 – in the very first few minutes of the new year – the Pet Shop Boys appeared at the celebrations at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin in front of an audience of over a million people, playing four songs: “Go West,” “Winner”, “Suburbia” and “Memory of the future”.
On March 13 the Pet Shop Boys announce that, after 28 years, they are leaving Parlophone records and that their next album will be released globally on their own label x2 (pronounced “times two”) through Kobalt Label Services.
On March 13 the Pet Shop Boys announce that, after 28 years, they are leaving Parlophone records and that their next album will be released globally through Kobalt Label Services.
On March 22 the Pet Shop Boys perform at the Cumbre Tajin festival in Mexico in what is effectively a prequel to their summer Electric tour. The set list includes two songs from their forthcoming album, “Axis” and a cover of the Bruce Springsteen song “The last to die”, both notably propulsive and electronic. “Our next album,” notes Chris, “is usually a reaction to the previous one.”
On March 22 the Pet Shop Boys perform at the Cumbre Tajin festival in Mexico in what is effectively a prequel to their summer Electric tour. The set list includes two songs from their forthcoming album: “Axis” and a cover of the Bruce Springsteen song “The last to die”, both notably propulsive and electronic. “Our next album,” notes Chris, “is usually a reaction to the previous one.”
On June 2, “Vocal” is released as a digital single, though CD and vinyl versions subsequently follow. “Vocal” had originally been written for Elysium but set aside, then was transformed when they worked on it with Stuart Price. “Stuart made this probably the most euphoric piece of music we’ve ever produced,” says Chris. Even before its release, it becomes the regular final encore of their live show. A video, directed by the filmmaker and photographer Joost Vandebrug, uses Super 8 footage from raves in the late 1980s and early 1990s that, says Neil, “visualizes exactly what the song’s about,” says Neil. “It brought back a lot of memories,” adds Chris.
On June 19, Battleship Potemkin is screened for the first time in a cinema accompanied by its Pet Shop Boys-composed score at the BFI in London as part of this year’s Yoko Ono-curated Meltdown festival.
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 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.)
British Secretary of War John Profumo submits his resignation following revelations that he had lied to the House of Commons about his affair with alleged prostitute Christine Keeler. This is a pivotal event in what soon came to be known as ‘The Profumo Affair,’ which more than a quarter-century later would serve as the basis for the film Scandal and its PSB-penned and ‑produced soundtrack number ‘Nothing Has Been Proved,’ sung by Dusty Springfield.
The Pet Shop Boys perform ‘Opportunities’ on Top of the Pops.
Neil and Chris perform at London’s Picadilly Theatre as part of Before the Act, an Anti-Clause 28 show that celebrates the artistic creations of gay men and lesbians. Not every performer on stage is gay, but every literary excerpt, dramatic piece, song, and composition on the program is avowedly written or composed by gay people. Therefore the Boys’ choice of songs to perform—their own compositions—serves, in essence, as an act of ‘coming out.’
The Very Introspective, Actually PSB tribute disc is released.
The Boys perform in Las Vegas.
Their Fundamental Tour comes to the Royal Concert Hall in Nottingham, U.K.
Neil and Chris have lunch with Johnny Marr, who had attended the previous night’s PSB/Take That show in Manchester.
This evening the Boys bring their Electric Tour to Moscow.
They begin a brief Summer 2015 ‘extension’ of the Electric Tour with a concert in Badajoz, Spain.
The Boys are in Berlin for an appearance this evening on the German TV show Mensch Gottschalk.
They continue work on ‘Angelic Thug’ and then develop its instrumental version, ‘Johnny’s Theme.’
Neil records vocals for the song ‘Why Can’t I?’
The Boys perform in Hamburg, Germany.