On October 23 a compilation album, Pop! Justice: 100% Solid Pop Music, put together by the popjustice website, is released. It includes the previously-unreleased new version of “It’s a sin” which the Pet Shop Boys performed at their Barfly concert.
On September 18 Chris returns to his old school, the Arnold School in Blackpool, to be shown round the school and open some curtains to reveal a plaque to mark the opening of their new music facility, the Lawrence House Music Centre.
On July 24 “Minimal” is released as a single: “The words of the song are simply about miniminalism”. Its video is the closest to a straight performance video the Pet Shop Boys have ever made.
On June 15 the Fundamental tour begins at the Skein Sommerfestival in Norway. The innovative show, designed by Es Devlin who designed the musical Closer to Heaven, is centred around a giant cube which can be unfolded, and inhabited, in a multitude of ways.
On May 8 “I’m with stupid”, a song “about Bush and Blair, comparing them to somebody with an apparently stupid partner”, is released as a single. “The main point, though,” Neil explains, “is the line ‘Is stupid really stupid? Or a different kind of smart?” The video features actor-comedians David Walliams and Matt Lucas, longtime Pet Shop Boys fans most famous for the BBC comedy series Little Britain, playing the Pet Shop Boys in a low-rent musical after having kidnapped their inspiration.
On May 22 they release a new album, Fundamental, produced by Trevor Horn. “We had the title before we ever started making the album. It originally comes from the endless discussions of fundamentalism that we live through at the moment. As ever with an issue like that, we related it to what we do, and we wanted to make an album that was very electro, that was fundamentally Pet Shop Boys.…The idea behind the lyrics was to take contemporary events and put them into songs that are apparently about interpersonal relationships.”
On February 20 “Sorry”, the second single from Madonna’s Confessions From The Dancefloor album, is released. It contains a remix by the Pet Shop Boys, “Sorry (PSB Maxi-Mix)”, in which Neil’s voice intermingles with Madonna’s, and reaches number one in the British charts. That same month, Neil presents Madonna with her Best International Female Solo Artist award at the Brit awards. In her acceptance speech she declares: “It’s ironic because even though I’m an American recording artist, it is British recording artists who have influenced my work the most., from David Bowie to Elvis Costello, Portishead to Radiohead, the Pet Shop boys to Goldfrapp…”
On December 19 they appear onstage at the nightclub Two Too Much, performing two songs at the London stag night for Elton John and David Furnish: “It’s a sin” and “I will survive” — joined on the latter by Scissor Sisters’ singer Jake Shears. Later in the week they attend the couple’s wedding celebration.
On September 5 their new score to Battleship Potemkin is released on CD on EMI Classics — as is usual with classical releases, on the sleeve the record is primarily credited to the composers: Tennant/ Lowe. Earlier in the month they have performed the score as in Trafalgar Square last year four times in Germany: in Frankfurt, Bonn, Berlin and Hamburg.
On July 2 they headline a concert in Red Square, Moscow, one of eight simultaneous Live 8 concerts around the world intended to put pressure on world leaders to provide debt relief and other measures for Africa at the following week’s G8 summit. The Pet Shop Boys are only approached the previous week at a party by Emma Freud. They perform after one day’s rehearsal with Mark Refoy, Dawne Adams, Pete Gleadall and, for the first time in five years, Sylvia Mason-James. One song from their performance, “Go West”, will subsequently appear on the Live 8 DVD in September.
A Top of the Pops special devoted to the Pet Shop Boys airs on U.K. television. On the same day, Neil and Chris take part in a live webchat hosted by the BBC.
As part of an effort to help ‘save’ independent record shops (which have been dwindling now for several years around the world), today has been declared ‘Record Store Day.’ As part of the effort, various record companies and performers have issued special limited-edition ‘hardcopy’ releases to be sold exclusively in such shops. The Pet Shop Boys release a vinyl 45 of ‘Love Life’ backed with ‘A Powerful Friend.’
Neil reportedly attends a small, ‘intimate’ Rufus Wainwright performance this evening at Under the Bridge in the Fulham section of London.
It’s Maundy Thursday—the eve of Good Friday on the Christian calendar—and the German electronic duo Diamond Version debut online their new cover of the classic gospel hymn ‘Were You There?’ featuring vocals by Neil Tennant.