Pet Shop Boys

Chelsea to Parlophone

Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe met on 19 August 1981 in a hi-fi shop on the King's Road in Chelsea, where Tennant needed a connector for a Korg MS-10 synthesizer he had bought. They found a shared love of disco and electronic music, with singles by Soft Cell and Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark as touchstones, and began writing in Tennant's flat and then, from 1982, in a small Camden Town studio owned by Ray Roberts. Tennant was an assistant editor at Smash Hits. While interviewing Sting in New York in 1983 he met the producer Bobby Orlando and gave him a demo. Orlando's 1984 recording of West End Girls became a club hit in Los Angeles and San Francisco, but in Britain it was only a 12-inch import.

In March 1985 they cut their ties with Orlando and signed to Parlophone with the manager Tom Watkins. Re-recorded with the producer Stephen Hague at Advision Studios, West End Girls was released in October 1985. It reached number one in Britain in January 1986 and in the United States that May. The debut album Please followed on 24 March 1986 and began the habit of one-word titles.

Actually and Introspective

The second album, Actually, came out on 7 September 1987 and entered the British chart at number two behind Michael Jackson's Bad. It produced four British top 10 singles, among them It's a Sin, a number one they had written in 1982, and What Have I Done to Deserve This?, a duet with Dusty Springfield that reached number two in both Britain and the United States. Tennant said the album can be taken loosely as a critique of Thatcherism. At Christmas 1987 their version of Always on My Mind, which is not on the album, was the British number one.

A year later Introspective offered six tracks of six minutes or more, among them Left to My Own Devices, their first recording with an orchestra. Tennant dates the end of their imperial phase to September 1988, when Domino Dancing peaked at number seven.

Behaviour

For Behaviour, released on 22 October 1990, they went to Munich in April 1990 to work with Harold Faltermeyer, whom they chose because he was an expert on analogue equipment. Johnny Marr played guitar on two songs and Angelo Badalamenti arranged the orchestra on two others. Lowe said they had set out to write an uplifting album and ended up with the opposite, and Tennant said sad songs are more interesting to write. Being Boring, an elegy for Tennant's friend Christopher Dowell, who died of AIDS in 1989, reached only number 20 in Britain and ended a run of ten consecutive top 10 hits. The album went to number two in Britain and number 45 in the United States. Barry Walters of Pitchfork later compared it to the Cure's Disintegration and Depeche Mode's Violator as records that carried their makers into a new decade.

Very

After a break in 1992 they set out to make an uplifting dance-pop album. They worked on songs at Lowe's home studio and finished them at Sarm West, with Hague mixing. Very, released on 27 September 1993, is the only Pet Shop Boys album to reach number one on the British album chart. It came with a new look: orange jumpsuits and tall dunce caps for Can You Forgive Her?, designed by David Fielding, and computer-generated videos directed by Howard Greenhalgh. Tennant said that everyone else was being real, so they were being artificial. The second single was a cover of the Village People's Go West, which reached number two in Britain and became a football chant. Very has been called their coming-out album, because Tennant publicly discussed his sexuality around that time.

Since

The albums kept coming, among them Bilingual in 1996, Fundamental in 2006 and Yes in 2009. The 1999 Guinness Book of Records listed them as the most successful duo in British music history. In 2009 they received the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music, and in 2012 they performed West End Girls at the closing ceremony of the London Olympics. In 2013 they left Parlophone and released Electric on their own label, x2, and in 2024 they returned to Parlophone for Nonetheless. In 2016 Billboard named them the top dance duo or group since the Hot Dance Club Play chart began. Lady Gaga has said that she listened to them regularly while making her debut album, The Fame.