In the opening minutes of the New Year, the Pet Shop Boys appear on British TV as special guests on the now traditional televised New Year’s Eve pop star performance, this year by Years and Years’ Olly Alexander at London’s Riverside Studios. They joined him for two songs, “It’s a sin” and “Dreamland”. (In a more normal year this would have been a live broadcast, but due to the pandemic it has been recorded several weeks earlier, on December 8.)
On March 22, “Purple Zone”, a single credited to Soft Cell and Pet Shop Boys, is released. The song had originally been recorded by Soft Cell alone for their forthcoming Happiness Not Included album but after the Pet Shop Boys expressed enthusiasm for the as-yet-unreleased song after hearing Soft Cell perform it at the Hammersmith Apollo in November 2021, an initial invitation to remix the song led to its reworking as a collaboration, and to a joint video shoot in a south London pub. “We’ve always acknowledged Soft Cell,” notes Chris. “It felt like a real moment,” says Neil.
On May 10, after two pandemic-related postponements, the Pet Shop Boys’ Dreamworld: the greatest hits tour – originally scheduled to begin in May 2020 – finally opens in Milan.
On June 26, the Pet Shop Boys perform for the third time at the Glastonbury festival. For the first seven songs, a technical glitch forces Chris to perform hidden behind a screen, but eventually he is revealed. “After that,” says Neil, “it was a real adrenaline rush.”
On September 17 in Toronto the Pet Shop Boys play the first of 13 co-headlining shows with New Order across North America on the Unity tour. The idea that the two groups might tour together in this way was one that Chris has floated some years before: “I just thought it would be something I’d like to go and see.” (The tour’s eventual name, Unity, was Bernard Sumner’s counter-proposal to Chris’s initial suggestion, United.) The two acts alternated opening and closing the show, both performing, as New Order preferred, full ninety-minute sets; before, and in between, Paul Oakenfold DJ-ed. “It felt like,” says Neil, “to use our age-old word, an event. It felt like an event for us and for the audience.”
On December 31 the Pet Shop Boys perform at the Hogmanay celebrations in Edinburgh. Their set includes a new version of “Paninaro”, its first performance for thirteen years.
Andy MacKay of Roxy Music records the saxophone solo at the end of ‘Love Comes Quickly’ at London’s Advision Studios. Neil and Chris spend part of the time chatting with Andy’s wife.
‘Left to My Own Devices’ peaks at #84 on the U.S. singles chart. On this same date, Neil attends the final performance of Stephen Sondheim’s Follies at London’s Shaftesbury Theatre. ‘Losing My Mind,’ which the Boys would soon demo and record with Liza Minnelli, comes from this musical, although whether it was Neil’s attendance at the show that inspired their cover or they were already interested in the song beforehand is uncertain.
David Morales mixes the recent PSB recording of ‘New York City Boy’—appropriately enough, in a New York City studio.
The Boys perform in Bremen, Germany.
Disco 3 is released in the United States and a number of other countries. On this same day, the video for the single ‘London’ receives its official ‘launch’ at London’s Rocket Gallery, with Chris and Neil in attendance along with the video’s director, Martin Parr.
Neil is the guest on today’s edition of the famed BBC Radio 4 show Desert Island Discs.
Neil and Chris write the song ‘Invisible.’ Later they go out to dinner and a karaoke bar.
The Pet Shop Boys and Soft Cell are at The Black Prince, a pub in the Kennington district of London, filming scenes for the video for their upcoming collaborative single, ‘Purple Zone.’