As a kid I listened to the Pet Shop Boys on the radio whenever they released new singles, but it wasn’t until I was 14 or 15 that I started to get more interested in their music. This was because I had never taken the time to listen to more than one song at a time. I used to chill with a bunch of guys at my friend Chicken’s house and he had the Discography album and he used to play it and the more times I listened to it the better he got. I now own most of the Pet Shop Boys albums and listen to them regularly.
The Pet Shop Boys consist of Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe and are a synthpop/electronic music duo. They have sold more than 100 million records worldwide since they were founded in 1981 when they met at a music store in Chelsea, London. They were originally called West End after the area of London they came from, but eventually settled on the Pet Shop Boys because a couple of their friends worked in a pet shop.
In 1985, the Pet Shop Boys signed with Parlophone, recorded and released the album Please in 1986, containing some of their most famous hits including West End Girls, Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots of Money), Suburbia and Love Comes Quickly. West End Girls was their first number 1 in the UK and went on to be number 1 in Canada, the US, Finland, Ireland, Hong Kong, Israel, Lebanon, Norway and New Zealand. Disco, which is a Please remix album, was also released in 1986.
1987 was a busy year for the Pet Shop Boys. The Single West End Girls earned them a BRIT Award and also an Ivor Novello Award. The album was actually released and they had some recording sessions with Dusty Springfield for the What Have I Done To Deserve This single. Another couple of big hits from the album were It’s A Sin and Rent. The group also played a special television concert for the 10th anniversary of Elvis’s death, where they performed Always On My Mind.
Introspective was the album released in 1988 that also contained some of their most popular songs: Left To My Own Devices, I’m Not Scared, Domino Dancing, and the single Always On My Mind. The Pet Shop Boys toured extensively in Hong Kong, Japan and the UK and it was not until 1990 that they released their fourth album Behavior which was in a different style from their more usual upbeat albums.
Since the release of Discography in 1991, which contained most of their hits, the Pet Shop Boys have released several studio albums and remix albums and have written and collaborated with many other musicians. The Pet Shop Boys have also changed their style several times, from the old style of Adidas tracksuits to new futuristic looks like in the Go West single.
Some of the artists who have worked with the Pet Shop Boys on music and videos include: Liza Minelli, Dusty Springfield, Patsy Kensit, Mark Farrow, Barbra Windsor, Ian McKellen, Bernard Sumner, Johnny Marr, Boy George, Blur, and David Bowie. name a few.
Some of his most notable albums are Please, Actually, Introspective, Behaviour, Very, Bilingual, Nightlife, Release, Fundamental, Disc 1-4 and Pop-Art and some of his most famous songs over the years have been: West End Girls, What Have I Done To Deserve This, Left To My Own, It’s A Sin, Going West, Absolutely Fabulous, I Bet She’s Not Your Girlfriend, Be a Vida E (That’s Life), I’m With Stupid and Number
My top 10 Pet Shop Boys songs are:
01. Suburbs
02. What have I done to deserve this?
03. Left to my own devices
04. Jealousy
05. One thing leads to another
06. One in a million
07. Radio
08. Here it could not happen
09. Opportunities (Let’s make a lot of money)
10. A day of red letters