The Pet Shop Boys are a synth-pop band that is composed of the duo Neil Tennent and Chris Lowe, both of whom hail from the UK. The two of them formed their band in London in 1981, and they’ve been making music ever since. Their nearly four-decade musical career is still going strong, so let’s take a look back at their music through the decades.
The Early Years of The Pet Shop Boys: 1981 - 1984
The Duo was recording their music material for about a year at Tennent’s flat, then went on to record it from a small studio. In 1983, after Tennent passed along a duo’s demo tape to Bobby Orlando, a producer at Hi-NRG, they got together to record another 11 tracks. That was the beginning of the Pet Shop Boys’ meteoric rise to fame that would last for the next four decades.
These 11 tracks contain some of their best earlier music, including “West End Girls,” “It’s A Sin,” “I Get Excited” and “Two Divided By Zero.” These four tracks helped pave the way for their future success.
The Middle Years of The Pet Shop Boys: 1985 - 1992
The next seven years of the Pet Shop Boys were frantic as they began to build their large collection of songs and albums. However, these middle years of theirs were not just dedicated to advancing their music, but also their appearances on film, tv and radio. All of this, though, was to help them continue to gain fame for their music.
During that period, the most popular albums they released were: Honestly, Reputation, and Please. Some of their best known singles from this time were: “Love Comes Quickly,” “Opportunities: (Let’s Make A Lot of Money)”, and “I Don’t Need to Be Scared”. The albums that stand out from that time are: Actually, Reputation, and Please. All three made it big in the music world, and are still beloved to this very day.
The Late Middle Years Of The Pet Shop Boys: 1993 - 2011
For the next 18 years of the Pet Shop Boys career, they kept releasing their acclaimed singles and albums, shaking up the music world, a little at a time. As technology started to get better and better, the duo started releasing music videos to accompany their singles and sometimes their albums as well.
The Pet Shop Boys released their musical they were working on during this time. First appearing at London’s Arts Theatre in 2001, their musical, Closer To Heaven, didn’t do very well and wound up closing earlier than they had planned. It was one of their biggest taste of defeat and disappointment when it came to their musical output.
The Late Years of The Pet Shop Boys: 2012 - Present
The 2010’s to now saw the group still jamming out and were filled with a vast amount of music, both singles and albums. They performed in an incredible number of different theatres and concerts in order to perform their music live for their fans around the globe.
Their array of trophies and awards keeps growing, with the Beyond Theatre Award in 2011. They also performed live at the 2012 Olympics as part of the closing ceremony, carving their names into Olympic history for all time.
