History

On June 17 they appear onstage for the finale of Yoko Ono’s performance at the Royal Festival Hall (part of the Patti Smith-curated Meltdown), performing with her their remix of “Walking On Thin Ice”. 

Kylie Minogue’s latest tour, Showgirl, includes the duet which first appeared on Nightlife, “In denial”; during the shows she uses the original Pet Shop Boys arrangement and duetted with Neil’s previously-recorded voice.

At the Ivor Novello awards “West End girls” wins a vote of radio listeners as best song of the decade from 1985 to 1995, beating a shortlist of U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”, Radiohead’s “Creep”, Massive Attack’s Unfinished Sympathy” and Robert Palmer’s “Addicted To Love”.

On April 25 a double CD is released in the Back To Mine series with one CD of music chosen and sequenced by Chris, the other by Neil. Chris declares that his choices (mostly a mixture of eighties and contemporary songs, ranging from rare hi energy obscurities to Queen’s “The Show Must Go On”) are “for everybody who has been discriminated or dispossessed by society” and Neil explains his selections (from Elgar to Etienne Daho) as “a sequence of music that would be very, very late night and primary instrumental, and that tried to mix together electronic music, classic music and pop music in a sort of seamless way…it’d be quite good to seduce someone to”. (The only artist to appear on both discs is Dusty Springfield, with “I’d Rather Leave While I’m In Love” and “Goin’ Back” respectively).

On February 17 the Pet Shop Boys present New Order with the Godlike Genius Award at the NME Awards. (Neil’s part of the speech was 163 words long, Chris’s was two: “…New Order”.) In an earlier speech, Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos thanks “the great groups” who have inspired them, “some of whom are here today — Oasis, New Order, the Pet Shop Boys…”

Results, the album the Pet Shop Boys produced for Liza Minnelli in 1989, is re-released in a deluxe CD and DVD package, including remixes and videos.

On November 24 they perform live on the radio for the first time in the London studios of XFM, playing “Rent”, “Opportunities”, “Flamboyant” (for the first time) and “West End girls” (in its original Bobby O arrangement).

On November 11 the Pet Shop Boys perform at Wembley Arena as part of the Prince’s Trust concert Produced By Trevor Horn, featuring most of the notable artists Trevor Horn has worked with over the years, including The Buggles, Dollar, Yes, Grace Jones, Tatu, Seal and Frankie Goes To Hollywood. They play the two songs they recorded with Trevor Horn in the Eighties, “Left to my own devices” and “It’s alright”. Both songs also appear in their studio single versions on the double CD Produced By Trevor Horn. 

On October 4, Chris’s birthday, the Pet Shop Boys receive the Inspiration Award at the Q awards, presented to them by Bernard Sumner. They are also joined on their table by Johnny Marr. As Bono walks through the crowd to receive a U2 award, he gives Neil a kiss.

On the evening of September 12^th the Pet Shop Boys’ new score to Einsenstein’s classic 1925 Russian silent film Battleship Potemkin is premiered in light drizzle at London’s Trafalgar Square in front of an estimated audience of 20,000. (They had been approached with this idea in April 2003 by Philip Dodd, the director of the ICA.) The Pet Shop Boys perform behind gauze with the Dresdner Sinfoniker, conducted by Jonathan Stockhammer, playing orchestrations by Torsten Rasch who first came to their attention with his orchestral album of works by Rammstein, Mein Herz Brennt; above the performers the movie is projected on a giant screen. The performance is preceded by a provocative spectacle masterminded by, and rant from, Simon McBurney. They encore with one of the score’s vocal songs, “No time for tears”