Get the latest gossip

‘Music has ceased to be ageist’: Pet Shop Boys on 40 years of pop genius – and their hopeful new album

The pandemic was but a minor blip in Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe’s four decades of arch observation, artful imagery and playful theorising. ‘You’ve got to stay interested,’ they say

In their east London studio HQ, says Lowe, 64, they like “that big, thick chocolate bar – something-baloney?” Aside from their Tony’s Chocolonely compulsion, they also frequent a nearby deli, where “I also buy 100% rye bread,” says Tennant, 69, segueing into a customarily arch conspiracy. Photograph: Ken McKayThe Pets’ entwinement with our cultural subconscious seems stronger than ever, from their 2022 Glastonbury Other stage headline set to two recent film syncs – Rent in Saltburn, sung in a tragic karaoke rendition by a young man living the song’s complex enmeshing of desire and dependence, and two spots in Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers, portals to memories of queer loss and hedonism. And pop seems to buoy Tennant and Lowe in a perpetual present: they discuss the 1988 Frankie Knuckles remix of I Want a Dog that appears in Haigh’s film with such immediacy, it’s as if they’re still poring over the cassette in the back of the stretch limo that took them to the DJ’s New Jersey studio.

Get the Android app