Other pop musicians have burned brighter and more briefly, but I can’t name any who rival the Pet Shop Boys’ extraordinary longevity and consistency. Three decades after former Marvel Comics UK editor Neil Tennant began collaborating with architectural student Chris Lowe, wielding synths with arch intelligence, they’re still making feyness danceable. Their new LP Electric is the best one they’ve produced since the mid-‘90s precisely because of its monomaniacal club-dwelling, even transfiguring Bruce Springsteen’s anti-war song “The Last to Die” and its highway/radio Boomer signifiers into a Hi-NRG number. (There is also a track about pleading with a one-night stand to stay all weekend, in case you worried Tennant might be getting hard.) Here, to celebrate, is a walkthrough of every one of the 53 singles released by this singles band nonpareil.
“West End Girls” (April 9, 1984/October 28, 1985)
“Calling Neil Tennant a bored wimp is like accusing Jackson Pollock of making a mess,” Robert Christgau once wrote, back when they were known for irony rather than sincerity. But the two have always been complementary in Pet Shop Boys songs, scabbard and shield. “Vocal” begins at the other end of the party “Being Boring” looked back on, a rave anthem that anticipates its own recollection: “Expressing fashion, explaining pain/Aspirations for a better life are ordained.” Yet when the synths build up to Tennant marveling “everything about tonight feels right and so young,” the only distance in his 59-year-old voice is the kind that accompanies reverence.
