| Origin | England |
| Activity | 1981- |
| Status | Active |
| Genres | Synthpop, dance, art pop, electronic. |
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Pet Shop Boys (Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe) are the most successful duo in UK music history. Since signing to Parlophone Records in 1985, they have achieved 42 Top 30 singles in the UK including 22 Top 10 hits and four number ones. They have released 12 studio albums all of which have made the UK Top 10 as well as album charts around the world.
Three-time Brit Award winners and six-time Grammy nominees, they have achieved 42 Top 30 singles and 22 Top 10 hits in the UK Singles Chart, including four number ones: “West End Girls”, “It’s a Sin”, “Always on My Mind” and “Heart”. Other songs include “Being Boring”, “Home and Dry”, “Rent”, “Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots of Money)”, “What Have I Done to Deserve This?” in a duet with Dusty Springfield and “Thursday (feat. Example)”.
Pet Shop Boys formed in London in August 1981, when vocalist Neil Tennant (a former editor at Marvel Comics who later gained some recognition as a journalist for Smash Hits magazine) first met keyboardist Chris Lowe (a onetime architecture student) at an electronics shop. Discovering a shared passion for dance music and synthesizers, they immediately decided to start a band. After dubbing themselves Pet Shop Boys in honor of friends who worked in such an establishment — while also obliquely nodding to the sort of names prevalent among the New York City hip-hop culture of the early ’80s — the duo’s career first took flight in 1983, when Tennant met producer Bobby “O” Orlando while on a writing assignment. Orlando produced their first single, 1984’s “West End Girls.” The song was a minor hit in the U.S. but went nowhere in Britain, and its follow-up, “One More Chance,” was also unsuccessful.
Upon signing to EMI, Pet Shop Boys issued 1985’s biting “Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots of Money).” When it too failed to attract attention, the duo’s future appeared grim, but Tennant and Lowe then released an evocative new Stephen Hague production of “West End Girls,” which became an international chart-topper. Its massive success propelled Pet Shop Boys’ 1986 debut LP, Please, into the Top Ten, and when “Opportunities” was subsequently reissued, it too became a hit. Disco, a collection of dance remixes, was quickly rushed into stores, and in 1987 the duo resurfaced with the superb Actually, which launched two more Top Ten smashes — “It’s a Sin” and “What Have I Done to Deserve This?,” a duet between Tennant and the great Dusty Springfield. Later that year, “Always on My Mind,” a lovely cover of the perennial Elvis Presley standard, reached number one in several countries and the Top Ten in the U.S. A documentary film titled It Couldn’t Happen Here was released one year later.
In October 1988, Pet Shop Boys issued their third studio LP, the eclectic Introspective. “Domino Dancing” and “Left to My Own Devices” both reached the Top Ten in Great Britain. The following year, Pet Shop Boys collaborated with a variety of performers, most notably Liza Minnelli, for whom they produced the 1989 LP Results. They also produced material for Springfield, and Tennant joined New Order frontman Bernard Sumner and ex-Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr in the group Electronic, scoring a hit with the single “Getting Away with It.” Tennant and Lowe reconvened in 1990 for the muted, downcast Behavior, produced by Harold Faltermeyer. Their hit medley of U2’s “Where the Streets Have No Name” and Frankie Valli’s “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” was released in 1991, and was followed in 1993 by Very, lauded as one of the duo’s finest efforts.
After a three-year absence, Pet Shop Boys resurfaced with Bilingual, a fluid expansion into Latin rhythms. Nightlife followed in 1999 and sparked the dance club hit “New York City Boy,” whose success allowed the group to tour the U.S. for the first time in eight years. While on tour, the duo also collaborated with playwright Jonathan Harvey on a musical surrounding gay life and societal criticisms, which the three had been planning since 1997.
In 2000 they received the Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music and at the 2009 BRIT Awards they were presented with the award for Outstanding Contribution to Music.
Pet Shop Boys have also written the West End musical Closer to Heaven with playwright Jonathan Harvey, produced in 2001 by the Really Useful Group. In 2004 they performed their soundtrack to the classic silent film, Battleship Potemkin, with the Dresden Sinfoniker in a free concert in Trafalgar Square presented by the ICA; they have since performed it at various spectacular outdoor events in Germany, Spain and the UK. They still had time to make a record for themselves, too — in April 2002, Tennant and Lowe issued Release, and Disco 3 was compiled for release the following year.
Pet Shop Boys continued releasing material throughout the decade’s latter half. In 2005, they put together a volume of the Back to Mine series and released their soundtrack designed to accompany the 1925 silent film Battleship Potemkin, a soundtrack they’d performed a year earlier at a free concert/screening in Trafalgar Square. A year later, they issued Fundamental, a mature, sometimes political album produced by Trevor Horn. The live album Concrete: In Concert at the Mermaid Theatre appeared at the end of the year, and Yes — a collaborative effort with the production crew Xenomania — marked the band’s tenth studio effort in March 2009. While playing shows in support of that album, Pet Shop Boys also released a hits compilation, Party, to coincide with the Brazilian leg of their tour. In 2010, the tour was documented on the CD/DVD release Pandemonium, and another greatest-hits compilation, Ultimate, arrived.
As writers, producers and remixers, Tennant and Lowe have collaborated, remixed or written for a wide range of artists including Dusty Springfield, Lady Gaga, Liza Minnelli, Madonna, David Bowie, Yoko Ono, The Killers and Girls Aloud.
In 2011, Pet Shop Boys composed a ballet, The Most Incredible Thing, based on the Hans Christian Anderson story of the same title. The project was a collaboration with choreographer Javier De Frutos and Britain’s leading dance theatre, Sadler’s Wells. The ballet won the Evening Standard Theatre Award and was given a second season at Sadler’s Wells the following year.
In 2012 Pet Shop Boys appeared before a worldwide television audience during the London Olympics’ closing ceremony. Two years later, Tennant and Lowe’s collaboration with Alan Turing biographer Andrew Hodges, A Man From The Future, received its world premiere as a Late Night Prom concert at the Royal Albert Hall with the BBC Concert Orchestra, the BBC Singers and narrator Juliet Stevenson.
In their live shows over the last 20 years, Pet Shop Boys have created an original and influential style of pop musical theatre, collaborating with directors, designers and artists including Derek Jarman, David Alden and David Fielding, Zaha Hadid, Sam Taylor-Wood and Es Devlin. Their 2009-2011 arena tour, Pandemonium, was described in a five-star review in The Times as “the ravishing pop spectacle of the year”.
Pet Shop Boys released their last album Electric in 2013, produced by Stuart Price. The album received great critical acclaim and gave Pet Shop Boys their highest album chart positions for 20 years in the UK and USA. The accompanying Electric tour subsequently visited 38 countries over three years and received ecstatic audience and critical reactions.
Pet Shop Boys’ new album, Super, was also produced by Stuart Price. In July 2016, Pet Shop Boys played an exclusive four-date residency entitled Inner Sanctum at the Royal Opera House in London. The concerts were staged by designer Es Devlin and choreographer Lynne Page.
Members
Neil Tennant (vocals)
Chris Lowe (synthesizers)
Related bands / Parallel projects
Dust, Electronic, Eighth Wonder, Dusty Springfield, Liza Minnelli, Boy George, The Killers, David Bowie, Robbie Williams, Take That, Elton John, Girls Aloud, Cicero, Kylie Minogue, Tina Turner, Yoko Ono, Kiki Kokova, Pete Burns, Philip Oakey, Blur, Morten Harket, Stuart Price, Example.
Discography
Please (1986)
Actually (1987)
Introspective (1988)
Behaviour. (1990)
Very (1993)
Bilingual (1996)
Nightlife (1999)
Release (2002)
Fundamental (2006)
Yes (2009)
Elysium (2012)
Electric (2013)
Super (2016)
Hotspot (2020)
Nonetheless (2024)