Month: September 2023

The bells to ring in the new year had barely stopped ringing when the Pet Shop Boys issued a third advance single from the forthcoming new album.

mp3: Pet Shop Boys – Monkey Business (radio edit)

2 January 2020 was the digital release date, just three weeks ahead of Hotspot, the fourteenth studio album.  A CD version would be in the shops in early February, slightly after the album was put on sale.

Monkey Business was another well-received track.  The duo have been more than happy to describe it as a party song, one which pays a bit of lip service to a number of upbeat, almost funky tunes that had been riding high at the top of the charts over much of the past couple of years.

Its backstory is now well known, thanks to Neil telling it on each occasion it has been played live over the years. The duo were on tour and had reached Austin, Texas when they chanced upon a larger-than-life man at their hotel who explained that he was in town “On monkey business—just playing around”, which Neil then used as inspiration to put him in a song as a shameless hipster who lived purely for the high-life. 

Given all that, the choice of B-side for this one was interesting:-

mp3: Pet Shop Boys – At Rock Bottom

Everyone talks about
their loss and the legacy
Sharing condolences
and offering sympathy
But at rock bottom
what got him?

It’s all about
It’s all about
It’s all about
It’s all about drugs

Almost as if to say to anyone who wants to live a life of Monkey Business that there’s very likely a price to pay.

Again, it’s a more than decent b-side.  As the vast majority of them have been over the years.

JC

Just two months after the release of Dreamland, another new single in advance of the new studio album was released:-

mp3: Pet Shop Boys – Burning The Heather

Having gone all synth-pop last time out, this time out it’s a slow-paced number with its sound relying somewhat on an acoustic guitar, courtesy of the wonderfully-talented Bernard Butler.

I’ve long been fond of those occasional moments when PSB slow things down and move away from the clubs and dance floor.  I think Neil Tennant is a much under-appreciated song-writer/lyricist, and Burning The Heather, if offered to, and accepted by, any one of the many 21st Century male pop stars whose songs of pain and anxiety sell by the millions, then this would have been a hit.

It’s a complex lyric, open to a number of possible interpretations, one of which is that it was inspired by the true life story of an elderly man who took committed suicide on the moors of Northern England, but who was not properly identified for more than a year as a result of him having lived as a loner who suffered from depression in London.  It’s a very sad take on things, but it does fit the narrative, albeit the final verse does suggest he was open to having his mind changed about his plans to end his life.

The initial digital-only release on 14 November was later accompanied by a 7″ single on 13 December 2019, with this being the additional song in both instances:-

mp3: Pet Shop Boys – Decide

An electronic classic in which Chris Lowe takes lead vocal for much of the song, albeit through his usual trick of having his vocal go through a distorter.  Is it too obvious to say that this is PSB offering their take on the truly awful state of the nation as it approached the impending General Election with the expectation that the Tories under Boris Johnson would get their mandate to ‘Get Brexit Done’. 

2020 was fast approaching.  The Pet Shop Boys had a new album ready for release, after which they would embark on Dreamworld: The Greatest Hits Live tour, in which the duo would visit 24 cities in Europe and the UK between 1 May and 24 June, with more festival dates and cities in the Americas, Asia and Australia likely to be added for later in the year.

SPOILER ALERT :  The tour, like all major music events in 2020, was cancelled as COVID rampaged its way across the globe.

JC