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.

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.”

History

On this day

1970

Several months after its U.K. world premiere, the film Women in Love has its U.S. debut in New York City. It’s mentioned here not on account of its (in)famous nude wrestling scene—which prompts more than one critic to suggest it should instead have been titled Men in Love—but because of a totally different scene that briefly features a teenaged Neil Tennant as one of several unnamed ‘child extras,’ a job for which he had been paid £3 per day. (He then used the money to buy a copy of the Beatles’ ‘White Album.’)

1991

The Pet Shop Boys appear on U.S. television on The Tonight Show. Chris walks off mid-performance because the camera is ignoring him.

1997

Neil attends Elton John’s 50^th-birthday costume party dressed as a royal dragoon.

2006

Neil has dinner with Robbie Williams and several others at Luciano, a posh London restaurant.

2007

The Boys conclude the South American leg of their Fundamental world tour with a show in Santiago, Chile.

2012

Having spent roughly two months in southern California working on their next album, Chris and Neil are now back in London to attend the opening night at Sadler’s Wells Theatre of the second run of their ballet The Most Incredible Thing, which includes a new scene and several other modifications. This same day, an interview with Neil in which he discusses the ballet can be heard on BBC Radio 2’s Weekend Wogan.

2016

They’re guests on Graham Norton’s TV show, during which they perform their current single, ‘The Pop Kids.’

2020

At home during the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, Chris records (the day before) and posts (today) a 13-minute video of him performing a solo instrumental rendition of ‘It’s Alright’ on his digital piano.

2025

Neil is one of several vocalists (also including Jake Shears) who appear with the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra conducted by Anne Dudley at the London Soundtrack Festival, performing classic film songs. Neil sings ‘Everybody’s Talkin’’ from Midnight Cowboy, ‘Nothing Has Been Proved’ from Scandal, and (with Shears) ‘Rent,’ which had been used in Saltburn.

Facts collated by geowayne.com