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.
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”.
The 53rd issue of the limited edition art magazine Visionaire is published. This issue, entitled SOUND, contains one hundred exclusive audio pieces over five discs in an elaborate sculptural package. The Pet Shop Boys’ contribution is, as commissioned, a song exactly one minute long. It is called “Transfer”.
On November 1 they appear at a War Child benefit at the Brixton Academy in London, a concert arranged by Keane. They perform four songs: “Rent”, “West End girls”, “Integral” and “Being boring”.
On November 25 the very final date of the Fundamental tour takes place, well over a year after the tour started, at the Sala Palatului in Bucharest, Romania. The very final song is a special performance of “Being boring”, with an accompanying photo tribute, in honour of their friend Dainton Connell who died in a Moscow car accident several weeks earlier on October 5.
On October 8 the album Disco 4 is released. Reversing the Disco series’ more usual practice, this album principally consists of mixes that the Pet Shop Boys have done for other artists: The Killers, David Bowie, Yoko Ono, Madonna and Atomizer. Also included are two of their own mixes of Pet Shop Boys songs, including a radically new version of “Integral”. A video is made of “Integral” though the song is not released as a conventional single.
At the Edinburgh festival an Australian musical theatre piece, Seriously, which structures a loose narrative out of an eclectic sequence of Pet Shop Boys songs has its first British performances. The Pet Shop Boys attend: “Very moving”.
On May 14 Rufus Wainwright’s album Release The Stars is released. Neil is the album’s executive producer and appears on four of the songs.
On May 14 Cubism, a DVD of the Fundamental tour, directed by David Barnard and filmed in Mexico City on November 14, 2006, is released. They chose Mexico to film as audiences had seemed so good on their previous visits: “Also, to us it seems almost slightly incongruous: ‘Pet Shop Boys in Mexico City’.” The DVD is also accompanied by a CD of the concert.
On March 6 “She’s Madonna”, credited to Robbie Williams with Pet Shop Boys, is released as a single.
The Boys perform in Munich, Germany.
They work in the studio on ‘Twentieth Century.’
Neil and Chris are rehearsing this weekend in preparation for their upcoming Electric Tour.
Chris and Neil announce on their official website that they will henceforth boycott The Beverly Hills Hotel, where they’ve previously stayed ‘a couple times,’ because it’s part of an international chain owned by the Sultan of Brunei, whose nation recently decreed death by stoning for gay people.
Although it has already had a number of performances, tonight is the official opening night of the London revival of the Pet Shop Boys/Jonathan Harvey stage musical Closer to Heaven. (The subsequent press reviews are mixed but, in general, lean more on the positive side.)
The third and final part of a documentary series about Dusty Springfield, Definitively Dusty, airs this evening on BBC Radio 2. It includes an interview with Chris and Neil concerning their work with her.