Pet Shop Boys
| Pet Shop Boys | |
|---|---|
 |
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 The Pet Shop Boys in Boston in October 2006 |
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| General information | |
| origin | London , England |
| Genre (s) | Synth Pop , New Wave , Euro Disco , Dance , Electropop |
| founding | 1981 |
| Website | www.petshopboys.co.uk |
| Current occupation | |
| Neil Tennant | |
Keyboard, drums vocals |
Chris Lowe |
Pet Shop Boys ( "Boys from the pet shop") are a British electro - duo , consisting of Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe , which since the fall of 1985 with hits such as West End Girls , Suburbia , It's a Sin and Go West has become internationally successful. The Pet Shop Boys write and produce for themselves, but also for other artists. They also compose music for film, theater and ballet.
With more than 100 million records sold, the duo is one of the best-selling music artists worldwide. According to the Guinness Book of Records , the musicians are considered to be the most successful pop duo in the history of music in Great Britain and have received three Brit awards and six Grammy nominations. Since 1986, the Pet Shop Boys have made 42 top 30 singles in the British charts. Of these, 22 were top 10 hits, including the four number one hits West End Girls , It's a Sin , Always on My Mind and Heart .
In 2009, the Pet Shop Boys were at the Brit Awards awarded the Honorary Award (Outstanding Contribution to Music) .
Band history
1981–1984: Foundation and first recordings
The Pet Shop Boys story began in an electronics store on King’s Road , London , where Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe met on August 19, 1981, when Tennant was looking to buy a cable for his first synthesizer . Tennant told Lowe about this synthesizer and gave him his phone number. Three days later Lowe called him and they met. The two shared a preference for dance music and the Hi-NRG scene and decided to write songs together from now on.
Based on their love for the West End of London, they first called themselves the West End , but later changed their name to Pet Shop Boys . According to an interview with Tennant, the name is said to be derived from friends who were then working in a pet shop in Ealing.
Tennant was working as a music journalist for Smash Hits at the time , while Lowe was an architecture student . After an interview with Tennant with the band The Police in New York, he took the opportunity to meet the disco producer Bobby "O" Orlando . In 1984 he recorded the two singles West End Girls and Opportunities with the duo , which were initially only considered an insider tip in discos in California, Belgium and France. In a legal dispute, however, they separated again.
Due to their "un glamorous " and "unvarnished" appearance, largely influenced by the photographer and music video director Eric Watson , and their song lyrics, the Pet Shop Boys quickly achieved cult status in the 1980s. The two openly gay musicians are committed to the gay movement and regularly appear at relevant benefit events.
1985–1989: First successes and breakthrough
After the interest of record companies increased, West End Girls was remixed by Stephen Hague and released in October 1985 on Parlophone / EMI . The title became a worldwide hit, reaching first place in both the British and US singles charts. In 1987, the # 1 hit won a Brit Award for best song of the year. A series of other hits like Suburbia (1986), It's a Sin (1987), a cover version of Always On My Mind (British Christmas number one hit of 1987) and Heart (1988) followed.
The debut album Please , released in March 1986 , the remix album Disco released in November 1986 and their second regular studio album Actually released in September 1987 were also very successful, so that the Pet Shop Boys received a Brit Award in 1988 for the best British group. In the same year, the duo shot the film It Couldn't Happen Here with Jack Bond , which premiered in cinemas in the fall of 1988. At the same time they released the album Introspective and toured Japan and England in the summer of 1989 . Derek Jarman was responsible for directing the show. The films he created for the first tour of the Pet Shop Boys were entitled Projections as VHS releases. The show itself is still only available in excerpts on VHS.
After their first successes, Tennant and Lowe also worked with other artists from 1987, including Dusty Springfield , Patsy Kensit and Liza Minnelli . With Dusty Springfield they sang together in the duet What Have I Done to Deserve This? (1987) and helped her to a comeback, which was followed by an album co-produced by the Pet Shop Boys ( Reputation ) and two single hits ( Nothing Has Been Proved and In Private ). For Minnelli they produced the song Losing My Mind , which became an international hit, and the accompanying album Results (1989), for which the Pet Shop Boys wrote seven tracks.
1990–1999: Continuation of the success
The Pet Shop Boys released their fourth studio album, Behavior , in October 1990 . The heavily orchestrated, rather quiet album, recorded together with Harold Faltermeyer in Munich, could not build on the successes of the 1980s. The released singles So Hard , Being Boring and Jealousy became smaller hits in 1990/1991. The one with How Can You Expect To Be Taken Seriously? third title decoupled from Behavior appeared in March 1991 as the B-side of a cover version of U2's Where the Streets Have No Name - in a medley with Andy Williams ' Can't Take My Eyes Off You . The performance tour followed and, with Discography (1991), a first greatest hits album.
Neil Tennant was also involved as singer and producer together with Bernard Sumner and Johnny Marr on the Electronic project, which had its biggest hit with Disappointed (1992). In 1992 the Pet Shop Boys collaborated with Boy George , for whom they produced the song The Crying Game - a contribution to the soundtrack of the film of the same name.
In September 1993 the Pet Shop Boys released the album Very , which was not only an enormous success musically, but also stood out visually with its orange knobbed cover and was therefore even exhibited in the New York Museum of Modern Art .
The second single, Go West , developed into one of their greatest hits and is still a popular song in the soccer and ice hockey stadiums. The title is a cover version of a moderately successful song by the Village People , which is based on the Canon and Gigue in D major by Johann Pachelbel .
In the videos for the singles from Very , in addition to Go West , Can You Forgive Her and I Wouldn't Normally Do This Kind Of Thing , the Pet Shop Boys acted in idiosyncratic costumes and headgear in front of computer-animated backgrounds.
In 1994 they started a six-week discovery tour through Australia, Asia and South America. Disco 2 followed in September 1994 and Alternative in August 1995 , a two-CD collection of B-sides. Among other things, songs sung by Chris Lowe such as Paninaro or We All Feel Better in the Dark can be heard, as well as a separate version of Losing My Mind written for Liza Minnelli .
After the Pet Shop Boys wrote the number Falling for Kylie Minogue in 1994 , remixed the song Girls and Boys by Blur and recorded a song of the same name with Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley , the two actresses of the British cult series Absolutely Fabulous , followed in 1995 a collaboration with David Bowie and Tina Turner . For Bowie they delivered a remix of Hallo Spaceboy and appeared with him at the presentation of the Brit Awards , where they sang this track, on which Neil Tennant could be heard. They wrote and produced the song Confidential for Turner, which was featured on their 1996 album Wildest Dreams .
In September 1996 Tennant and Lowe released the album Bilingual . The single Before , which was already decoupled before the album was released, proved to be moderately successful; the subsequent single Se A Vida É (That's The Way Life Is) became a summer hit and conveyed a picture of the influences from the field of Latin American music , which shaped a large part of the album.
In October 1999, the album Nightlife, again tending towards disco, followed with the singles I Don't Know What You Want But I Can't Give It Anymore , New York City Boy and You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You're Drunk . The album also included the duet In Denial with Kylie Minogue - a song about the difficult relationship between a gay father and his daughter. The tour for the album took the duo for the first time since 1991 on a concert tour through Europe and the USA.
At the turn of the millennium, the Pet Shop Boys cooperated with Robbie Williams , on whose single No Regrets (1998) Neil Tennant was involved as a background singer. For the Bloodhound Gang they worked as a remixer on their single Mope (2000).
2000–2009: change of style and benefit concerts
In May 2001, Closer to Heaven , Tennant and Lowe's first musical, premiered at the Arts Theater in London. The musical ran for one season until October 2001 and was also released on CD.
With the guitar-heavy album release from April 2002, the Pet Shop Boys struck a calmer note and left their usual dance-pop terrain. The first single, Home And Dry , was released with a rather unusual video that didn't match the common video aesthetic. The video clip shot by photographer Wolfgang Tillmans shows a shaky live shot of the Pet Shop Boys as well as scenes of busy mice on the tracks of a London underground station. On the tour for the album, too, Tennant and Lowe presented themselves without the pomp and theatrics of previous tours, but rather in the style of a rock band with a guitar and a reduced set.
In January 2003, the third remix album from the Disco series followed, and in November 2003 PopArt, the Pet Shop Boys' second regular greatest hits album, was released. PopArt contained all of the duo's top 20 British hits as a double CD and also two new pieces with Miracles and Flamboyant . On October 22nd of the same year, Mikhail Gorbachev's British pop duo was presented with the World Award in the “Arts” category in Hamburg .
In 2004 the Pet Shop Boys delivered two remixes for the controversial song Mein Teil von Rammstein .
They also worked with the producer Sven Helbig , the composer Torsten Rasch and the Dresden Sinfoniker on the score for Sergej Eisenstein's classic silent film Battleship Potemkin from 1925. After the Pet Shop Boys presented their work in London's Trafalgar Square in September 2004 to see them in September 2005 at several open-air events in Germany, including in Frankfurt, Bonn, Berlin and Hamburg. On September 5, 2005, the soundtrack Battleship Potemkin was released with 15 tracks on CD. On July 20, 2006, Sven Helbig staged a live performance as part of the 800th anniversary celebration in Dresden .
As part of the worldwide Live 8 benefit concerts, the Pet Shop Boys performed on July 2, 2005 in Moscow . For Madonna's single Sorry , the Pet Shop Boys produced the PSB maxi mix in early 2006 , which includes additional lines written and sung by Neil Tennant.
The album Fundamental was released on May 19, 2006. Trevor Horn played a key role , with whom Tennant and Lowe have already recorded a large part of Introspective . The first single was I'm With Stupid , the second was Minimal .
For the Robbie Williams album Rudebox , released in summer 2006, Tennant / Lowe produced the two songs She's Madonna and We're the Pet Shop Boys , the latter being the cover of the song of the same name by My Robot Friend .
The third single, Numb , was released on October 20, 2006, and the double CD Concrete - In Concert at the Mermaid Theater was released on October 23 . It was the two Brits' first official live CD. This is a recording of a concert on May 8, 2006 at the Mermaid Theater in London , at which the Pet Shop Boys performed together with the BBC Concert Orchestra under the direction of Nick Ingman. Renowned artists such as Trevor Horn (bass) and Anne Dudley (keyboards) have been won over to the band .
In the fall of 2006, the Pet Shop Boys toured the United States and Latin America. On October 1, 2007 the single Integral was released as the last release of the album Fundamental as a download-only version . In this song the Pet Shop Boys cover the introduction of ID cards in the UK planned by the Labor government at the time.
The album Yes was released on March 20, 2009 . The first single from the album was called Love etc. , the second single, released on June 19, 2009, Did You See Me Coming . The approximately ten-minute medley , which was performed by the Pet Shop Boys at the Brit Awards 2009, is available as a download version along with the single.
Since 2010: Further records and work on classic projects
With Pandemonium Live a CD-DVD set of their 2009 tour was released in February 2010. It contains recordings of their concert on December 21, 2009 in London's O2 arena.
In June 2010 the Pet Shop Boys performed again at the Glastonbury Festival . Their Pandemonium stage show was rated as one of the "Most Spectacular Glastonbury Moments Ever". The third best-of album was Ultimate Pet Shop Boys released on November 1, 2010 , which also contains the single Together .
On 15 November 2010, the advance sales began for the ballet piece The Most Incredible Thing ( German : The most incredible thing ), an adaptation of the fairy tale of the same name by Hans Christian Andersen in 1870 by Matthew Dunster choreographed by Javier de Frutos. This is the second time, after the Battleship Potemkin , that the musicians have set a theater or ballet performance to music. The piece shows the former Royal Ballet star Ivan Putrov and animations by Tal Rosner. The orchestration was carried out by the German composer Sven Helbig , with whom the band had already worked together in 2005 as a co-producer of the Battleship Potemkin . The world premiere took place on March 17th, 2011 at Sadlers Wells in London.
On April 4, 2011 it was announced that the Pet Shop Boys would be the exclusive opening act for the Progress Live tour of the former boy band Take That . The tour started on May 27, 2011 in Sunderland and ended on July 29, 2011 in Munich's Olympic Stadium .
On September 5, 2012, the duo presented their eleventh studio album, Elysium , at an electronic beats event organized by Deutsche Telekom ; the concert was broadcast on the internet from the Hebbel Theater in Berlin and the album was released two days later. The first single Winner was released on August 3, 2012.
The album Electric followed on July 15, 2013 and the group ended their collaboration with the record company Parlophone after 28 years. Since then, Tennant and Lowe have released their albums on their own label x2 ; Production and sales are carried out worldwide by Kobalt Label Services .
On July 23, 2014, a new stage play by the Pet Shop Boys premiered at the Royal Albert Hall in London. “ A Man From The Future ” is a musical memorial to the British mathematician Alan Turing , the implementation for the BBC Symphony Orchestra was carried out in collaboration with the German composer Sven Helbig .
For the thirteenth album Super by the Pet Shop Boys, released on April 1, 2016, a four-day series of concerts took place at the Royal Opera House in London from July 20 to 23, 2016 . Inner Sanctum from the album produced by Stuart Price was released as a promo single on January 21, 2016 . The single The Pop Kids was released on February 16, 2016. The cover of the album was designed by the designer Mark Farrow.
On the Jean Michel Jarre collaboration album Electronica 2: The Heart of Noise , on which 15 famous artists worked with the French musician, the Pet Shop Boys worked with Jarre in the form of the song Brick England . In 2018 the Pet Shop Boys recorded a concert CD and DVD , which was released on April 12, 2019. Inner Sanctum is a live recording of a gig at London's Royal Opera House . In February 2019 the EP Agenda was announced, which contains four new songs, all of which were made available via their YouTube channel with lyrics videos. The songs address current political events such as populism and the emergence of social media.
In November 2019, the fourteenth studio album Hotspot was announced, which was released on January 24, 2020. Just like the two previous albums, the album reached number 3 in the album charts in Germany and England. The Pet Shop Boys called the album the end of a trilogy, having made their last three albums with producer Stuart Price . Some of the songs on Hotspot are explicitly played in their adopted home Berlin.
Discography
The previous studio albums, best-of compilations and remix releases as well as the most important DVD releases.
Albums
Compilations / Others
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Collaborations
Video albums
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Singles
Overview of the internationally most successful and best-known single hits by the Pet Shop Boys.
- 1985: West End Girls
- 1986: Love Comes Quickly
- 1986: Opportunities (Let's Make Lots Of Money)
- 1986: Suburbia
- 1987: It's A Sin
- 1987: What Have I Done To Deserve This? (with Dusty Springfield )
- 1987: Rent
- 1987: Always On My Mind
- 1988: Heart
- 1988: Domino Dancing
- 1988: Left To My Own Devices
- 1989: It's alright
- 1990: So hard
- 1990: Being Boring
- 1991: Where The Streets Have No Name (I Can't Take My Eyes Off You) / How Can You Expect To Be Taken Seriously?
- 1991: Jealousy
- 1991: DJ Culture
- 1991: What Is It Worth It?
- 1993: Can You Forgive Her?
- 1993: Go West
- 1993: I Wouldn't Normally Do This Kind Of Thing
- 1994: Liberation
- 1994: Yesterday, When I Was Mad
- 1995: Paninaro '95
- 1996: Before
- 1996: Se A Vida É (That's The Way Life Is)
- 1996: single bilingual
- 1997: A Red Letter Day
- 1997: Somewhere
- 1999: I Don't Know What You Want But I Can't Give It Anymore
- 1999: New York City Boy
- 2000: You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You're Drunk
- 2002: Home And Dry
- 2002: I Get Along
- 2002: London
- 2003: Miracles
- 2004: Flamboyant
- 2006: I'm With Stupid
- 2006: minimal
- 2006: Numb
- 2007: Integral (Perfect Immaculate Mix) (Download)
- 2009: Love etc.
- 2009: Did You See Me Coming?
- 2009: Beautiful People
- 2010: Together
- 2012: Winner
- 2012: Leaving
- 2012: Memory of the Future
- 2013: Axis
- 2013: Vocal
- 2013: Love is a bourgeois construct
- 2013: Thursday
- 2016: Inner Sanctum
- 2016: The Pop Kids
- 2016: Twenty something
- 2016. Say it to me
- 2019: Dreamland
- 2019: Burning the Heather
- 2020: Monkey business
Awards
- 1987: Bravo Otto - Silver (Most Popular Rock / Pop Group)
- 1987: BRIT Award - Best British Single 'West End Girls'
- 1987: BPI Awards - Best Single 'West End Girls'
- 1987: Ivor Novello Awards - Best International Hit 'West End Girls'
- 1987: Ivor Novello Awards - Best International Hit 'It's a sin'
- 1988: BRIT Award - Best British Group
- 1988: BPI Awards - Best Group
- 1988: Houston Film Festival Awards - Gold Jury Award: It Couldn't Happen Here
- 1988: Berolina Awards - Group of the Year
- 1991: Music Week's Awards - Best Video Of The Year 1990: Being Boring
- 1994: EAST Award - Best International Single 'Go West'
- 1994: Siggraph Wave Awards - Best Music Video 'Liberation'
- 1994: Effects & Animation Festival Awards - Best Music Video 'Liberation'
- 1999: COMET Award - Video International 'I dont know what you want ...'
- 1999: El Pais De Las Tentaciones - Best International Band
- 2000: Ivor Novello Awards - Outstanding Contribution to British Music
- 2000: RSH Gold Awards - Best International Band
- 2003: SWR3 New Pop Award - Pioneers of Pop
- 2003: World Award - Best Arts
- 2004: 'Q' Award - Inspiration Award:
- 2009: BRIT Award - Outstanding Contribution To Music
- 2009: Radio Regenbogen Award - Pop international
- 2015: Mnet Asian Music Awards - Worldwide inspiration award
Awards for sold records
- 1988: Platinum for "Actually" in Germany (published 1987)
- 1988: Gold for "Introspective" in Germany (published 1988)
- 1991: Gold for "Disco" in Germany (published 1986)
- 1991: Gold for "Behavior" in Germany (published 1990)
- 1992: Gold for "Discography" in Germany (published 1991)
- 1993: Platinum for "Very" in Germany (published 1993)
- 1999: Gold for "Nightlife" in Germany (published 1999)
- 2010: Gold for PopArt in Germany (published 2003)
- 2012: Gold for Yes in Germany (published 2009)
Individual evidence
- ↑ "Pet Shop Boys: Biography" ( Memento of the original from November 18, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Warner Music. Retrieved October 27, 2008.
- ↑ The Guinness Book of Records 1999 p. 228. Guinness, 1998
- ↑ Chris Heath : Pet Shop Boys, Literally. Viking, 1991, ISBN 978-0670836161 , page 91 ff.
- ↑ "The bombs? We were in bed!" . Daily mirror. Retrieved July 25, 2005.
- ↑ BBC Online Article: Pet Shop Boys protest at ID cards
- ↑ APA : Pet Shop Boys live on CD and DVD. Accessed February 24, 2010.
- ^ Glastonbury 2010, Review - Telegraph (English)
- ↑ Pet Shop Boys - News - Ultimate Pet Shop Boys
- ↑ Pet Shop Boys - The Most Incredible Thing
- ↑ Solder's Wells Theater - Pet Shop Boys & Javier De Frutos - The Most Incredible Thing ( Memento of the original from August 10, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ BBC - Newsbeat - Pet Shop Boys join Take That on Progress UK tour
- ↑ Electronic Beats presents Pet Shop Boys live in Berlin
- ^ Pet Shop Boys in the Hebbel am Ufer theater
- ↑ http://petshopboys.co.uk/news/3788
- ↑ Announcement on the official homepage
- ↑ http://www.stern.de/kultur/musik/premiere-in-royal-albert-hall-londoner-fiegen-buehnenstueck-der-pet-shop-boys-2126156.html Stern.de of July 24, 2014
- ↑ Jungle World 12, March 24, 2016, p. 10.
- ↑ Pet Shop Boys release concert film. Retrieved February 18, 2019 .
- ↑ http://petshopboys.co.uk/news/2019-02-05/agenda
- ^ Christian Knuth: The Pet Shop Boys Agenda: Kitsch and Critics. February 6, 2019, accessed on April 6, 2020 (German).
- ↑ With new single "Dreamland": Pet Shop Boys announce album for January 2020. September 11, 2019, accessed April 6, 2020 (German).
- ^ Deutsche Welle (www.dw.com): Cheers for Berlin: the new Pet Shop Boys album "Hotspot" | DW | 01/24/2020. Retrieved on April 6, 2020 (German).
- ↑ The Vinyl Factory Store Editions Retrieved on July 16, 2013.
- ^ An interview with the Pet Shop Boys. Retrieved November 11, 2011.
- ↑ Burning the heather - radio edit by Pet Shop Boys . Retrieved November 15, 2019.
- ↑ RSH Gold Award 2000
