Pet Shop Boys

The 1986 album Please is a must have!

As I only have Discography (best of) and Very I suppose I'm a 'casual' fan but some of their hits are a couple of my favourite songs of all time, specifically Opportunities (Let's Make Lots Of Money), Being Boring, Suburbia, Rent, and if I keep going I will list them all. West End Girls always makes me think of London and is a nice companion to my beloved Straits' Wild West End. Also Neil Tennant is a Geordie like hubby.

Can't help feeling they have a private joke going, "How ridiculous can we make ourselves look in our concert promo photos, and the fans will still fall for it?"

Quote from foxfeeder

Can't help feeling they have a private joke going, "How ridiculous can we make ourselves look in our concert promo photos, and the fans will still fall for it?"

Is that where N*d Sylv*n learned his shtick?

A great hit!

Quote from Phil Morris

Is that where N*d Sylv*n learned his shtick?

Nah, Nad's a genius in comparison.

I really like their early stuff and saw them on their first tour. Some of the songs mentioned above are excellent intelligent pop music. I drifted away from their work, not through going off them or disliking it, just that thing that happens sometimes even with acts you don't mind. So I'm not very familiar with the more recent material.

I like their visual style. A pretty undemonstrative singer and a fairly stationary bloke stood behind a keyboard need a visual hook of some kind, fair play to them.

Quote from rkive

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A great hit!

Absolutely loved this tune when I was a kid. It was on some early compilation I had. Maybe even one of the "Now!..." discs from the 90s? Never explored the band too much further beyond being aware of a couple of their other hits. Always liked what I heard of them. Bunched them with Erasure in my mind for some reason... Rightly or wrongly!

Quote from foxfeeder

Can't help feeling they have a private joke going, "How ridiculous can we make ourselves look in our concert promo photos, and the fans will still fall for it?"

Hmmmmmmmm! (From their latest tour promo!)

Quote from Schrottrocker

Just for the fun of it, this is one of their newer songs (actually 2012), one of my favorites.

Many artists share the fate of being reduced to a short successful period and the rest of their work gets ignored, often unjustified. This is another example.

It's ok, not a patch on the brilliant pop sensibilities of their 80s/90s stuff which I'm more familiar with.

Are they ignored, unjustifiably or otherwise? Their albums consistently place in top 10s in various territories, they're generally well reviewed, and they still play large arenas, with occasional forays into halls and theatres. The tours also seem to be critically well received.

Quote from Schrottrocker

Wikipedia has an interesting story about 'It's a sin'.

That song was a cynical take on Neil Tennant's own past of being raised among Catholics. Apparently he had been victim of some church authorities who used the concept of sin to manipulate their sheep. The song caused controversies, making some strong Catholic people call out to burn Pet Shop Boys records.

In the middle of this, Jonathan King who we all know seemed to witness profits. He claimed 'It's a sin' was an uncredited remake of Cat Stevens' 'Wild World' since both songs use the same chord sequence; he took his claim to court and seriously sued the Pet Shop Boys for violation of copyright, also he recorded a synth pop version of Wild World to "prove" his point.

The court asked for a group of musicologists to help solve the matter. The musicologists explained that both songs are based on a certain chord pattern, a circle of falling fifths, which can be traced back to baroque music and has been a productive pattern throughout music history since then. A bunch of well-known pop classics are based on this sequence such as 'Fly me to the Moon' or 'I will survive'. So both 'Wild World' as well as 'It's a sin' make used of common musical material, which means no copyrights had been violated.

With that, Jonathan King had lost the cause. In turn, he then found himself sued by the Pet Shop Boys for defamation; he lost that cause too. On top of it all, nobody bought his cover version of 'Wild World' - he had put it out on a regular record, hoping someone would buy his version. All in all he had burned a hell lot of money, made no profit at all and ridiculed himself. Talk about a lesson of greed.

And all this only helped making 'It's a sin' the more successful. The song was one of the biggest hits ever for the Pet Shop Boys.

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As the thread popped back up in my feed, I reread this story and had to check out King's synth version of Wild World. All I can say about it is, what is wrong with that man's brain? He stole the music for It's a Sin and awkwardly grafted the words to Wild World on top. It almost disproves the point he was trying to make.

I am sure many of us have at least some of their music in their collection. Like me. I knew several songs, but became curious when they did "Release", which I stil like a lot.

A new track was released from their upcoming album "Nonetheless".

This is "Loneliness"

(not the best they have done ...)