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History

April 2023

On April 14, a new Pet Shop Boys’ EP, Lost, is released digitally and as part of the latest edition of the Pet Shop Boys periodical, Annually 2023. Lost was planned as a four track EP of songs that were originally demoed in 2015 for Super though now, in some cases, seemly newly relevant. Its title — taken from the first song, “The lost room”, inspired by a film about military school bullying and written in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Crimea — “also seems,” says Neil, “to represent a sort of larger, philosophical or political point, where there’ve been times recently where the world feels a bit lost in terms of the direction it’s going in.” This sense is further amplified by the last-minute addition of a fifth song, a more recent composition “Living in the past”, which the Pet Shop Boys had posted on social media two months earlier in rough demo form, accompanied by a video in which Vladimir Putin appeared to shapeshift into Joseph Stalin. 

Lost

2023 June

On June 16, a new Pet Shop Boys compilation, Smash, presenting 55 Pet Shop Boys’ singles from the years 1985 to 2020 in chronological order, is released. The title was Chris’s. “I was thinking of the artist Roy Lichtenstein,” says Chris. “It seemed very Roy Lichtenstein: Pow! Wham! Smash! And there’s also, ‘It’s a smash!’ – that’s what people used to say about singles. Also, there is the connection with Neil and Smash Hits.” Its sleeve is a combined, distorted version of previous Pet Shop Boys’ sleeves. “Listening through, I felt quite proud of the whole thing,” says Neil. “This astonishing number of singles over such long period of time. And I think the last CD is really good. You sort of imagine a moment where you might think, ‘this is all a bit dodgy now’, but in my opinion that doesn’t happen.” 

SMASH – The Singles 1985-2020

On this day

1986

Exactly one week after filming the ‘U.S. scenes’ for their ‘Suburbia’ music video, the Boys are in Kingston-upon-Thames to film its ‘U.K. portions.’

1995

Alternative debuts on the U.S. album chart at its #103 peak.

1997

As part of their ongoing research for writing their musical, Chris and Neil watch videos of Annie, Oliver!, and Carousel.

2005

Neil records background vocals no fewer than forty times for ‘The Sodom and Gomorrah Show,’ creating a falsetto chorus of ‘Sun, sex, sin, death, and destruction.’

2009

The Pet Shop Boys perform at the State Theater in Minneapolis.

2013

They perform the first of two consecutive nights’ shows at the Beacon Theater on Broadway in New York City.

2016

‘Say It to Me’ is released as a single. The Boys also appear as guests on Chris Evans’s morning show on BBC Radio 2.

2017

The London luxury fashion house Burberry uses a full program of PSB music for its September 2017 show this afternoon. Meanwhile, one day after the PSB show at Rock in Rio, Neil and their musical assistant Pete Gleadall are robbed while out taking a walk in Rio de Janeiro. Reports differ: some say that they were mugged at knifepoint, but Neil himself states on their website that merely his pocket was picked and he lost his iPhone.