The Making Of Pet Shop Boys’ “Please”

On the newest album from synth-pop’s drollest duo, Pet Shop Boys, dryly romantic (and icily British) vocalist Neil Tennant wryly recalls a past with longtime musical partner/orchestrator Chris Lowe without wallow or recoil. “The Pop Kids,” the centerpiece cut from the blunt-synthonic Super, finds Tennant—still writing and crooning like Noel Coward in a leather bar—wringing the line, “We were young but imagined ourselves so sophisticated/Telling everyone we knew that rock was overrated,” for all the cool, collected-ness he could muster. “That’s my snapshot recollection of coming up, really” says Tennant, talking about the time that led up to 1986’s Please, the first Pet Shop Boys album, which became an unlikely platinum-plated smash across the globe ... READ MORE