Pet Shop Boys: "Today's pop has become narcissistic and uninteresting"

The fastest way to feel happiness, like the first ice cream of summer, is to listen to the opening notes of a perfect pop song. For example, It's a Sin, by the Pet Shop Boys. In 2021 a British series with the same title was released: "It revolves around the drama of AIDS in the late eighties and early nineties. In fact, the song wasn't even heard in any chapter. But it is true that it has become a kind of anthem," admits Neil Tennant (North Shields, United Kingdom, 68 years).

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Pet Shop Boys: "Writing an anthem is very difficult. It's easier to be a whiner."

The sun of London, which has finally arrived after being begged for months, fills with light and heat the room where Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe (Blackpool, 63 years old), the components of Pet Shop Boys, receive EL PAÍS. They are the headquarters of Warner Music, in the neighborhood of Notting Hill. The most successful musical duo in the history of the United Kingdom, with more than fifty million records sold worldwide, does not feel like resting. They have just released Smash, a compilation of their greatest hits remastered, and Lost, an EPwith five songs that were left out of the Super album in 2016.

Next Wednesday they will offer their first performance at the Primavera Sound in Barcelona. On June 4 they will repeat in the city, and on 6 and 7 they will be in Madrid. "We've had our ups and downs. But when we got together, 40 years ago, we were writing songs. And we still like to do it. We make the songs and records we want to make. It sounds a bit silly, but that's the truth. And that pushes us to continue; the desire to continue doing new things has not disappeared," Tennant explains. He has always been the spokesperson of the group, the most talkative and expressive part of a professional couple who have maintained their collaboration and friendship for decades against all odds. "The shirt is by Issey Miyake [Japanese designer], I bought it twenty years ago," Neil explains to Chris as they prepare for the interview in which they will talk about Ukraine, Putin, Brexit, contemporary pop music or artificial intelligence.

The scenery and costumes of the Pet Shop Boys are part of their success. ERIK WEISS

Perhaps in their constant search lies the key to the prolonged success of the Pet Shop Boys. Two dance music enthusiasts who met by chance in an electronic components store on London's Kings Road and were able to rescue for Europe a style that was already languishing or maintained exclusively in New York gay clubs. They combined it with electronic music and pop melodies in search of perfection – "The perfect pop song is the one you listen to almost without realizing it," as Tennant says – in which there is elegance, irony and the right dose of intellectual snobbery. But above all, an extraordinary ability to capture the spirit of each decade.

"For me that's always been the main motivation: to capture what's happening in my life, but also in everyone else's lives, at any given time. There is always a public conversation in the air that ends up seeping into your songs. Sometimes as a joke, because people are capable of saying ridiculous things, but sometimes as something serious. It's hard not to be affected by the events and even the attitudes of each era," explains Tennant.

―And how is the pop that is made now?

"He's been getting more and more narcissistic. But I think our culture has become more narcissistic. And I find it very uninteresting.

Because behind their West End Girls, the single that catapulted them to fame, hides the inspiration of the chorus of voices that populate The Waste Land, by T. S. Eliot, the most famous poem of Anglo-Saxon modernism. And trapped in Being Boring, probably the masterpiece of the group, although it is not one of its most popular themes, hides the spirit and the quote of Zelda Fitzgerald: "She resisted being bored, especially because she was not boring at all." An account of the end of the party that meant for an entire generation the arrival of AIDS.

Tennant came out in 1994. Lowe has never wanted to comment on her sex life. For many of his followers, however, it is a question as obvious as it is irrelevant. Both participated in the campaign against Clause 28, the aberrant legislation promoted by the Government of Margaret Thatcher that prohibited local governments and public schools from "promoting homosexuality", a ghost that was only in the heads of British conservatives.

It's a false myth that Chris Lowe is introverted and boring. It happens to him that he does not give his opinions the high value that other stars give to theirs. But his irony and sense of humor are delicious. Each comment in the conversation is followed by a burst of contagious laughter. None of them lavish much on social networks, but they categorically deny being alien to that world. "Normally we go in, upload something that is provocative, and then block anyone who criticizes it. It's really pleasurable. Without the ability to block, it wouldn't make any sense," laughs Lowe.

The Pet Shop Boys recently generated some controversy by ensuring that they would have no qualms about using artificial intelligence as another instrument to compose songs. "Our manager's eldest daughter asked ChatGPT to write a lyric in the style of the Pet Shop Boys. He gave it a title and wrote something that wasn't too good, but was coming. It made me think about those times when you start writing part of a song and find it impossible to finish it. Sometimes for years. What I mean is that artificial intelligence can give you something to work with, it can serve as an instrument," Tennant explains.

The concerts of Pet Shop Boy always have a very careful scenography. Magda Campagne

Although in their case they have chained classics that remain valid for more than forty years, the duo assumes that pop is programmed to disappear. "I'm not too worried. Being ephemeral is part of the nature of pop music. You have to integrate into the new things, which are also ephemeral. Like Elton John when he records a duet with Dua Lipa, who actually ends up giving him a new hit that he would not have had without her, "says Tennant. "It's true that now, thanks to social networks, Spotify or YouTube, there are people who end up discovering West End Girls. But we also assume that any new album is not going to be as relevant as it could have been during the eighties. It is the sign of the times. It is not possible to conquer again the audiences of forty years ago. It happens to everybody. Also to Paul McCartney."

His new song, Living in the Past, presents without naming him a Putin eager to emulate Stalin. For a year now, the Ukrainian flag has been on the screen when they open the group's official website, and they are reluctant to entertain the idea of a negotiation with the Kremlin. "What kind of agreement was reached with Hitler? Evil must be defeated, period. Any pact with Russia would be meaningless, it would not even have the value of the paper on which it was written," Lowe said.

Active and attentive to his time, Tennant demonstrates an accurate analysis of the reality that surrounds him. "I was always against Brexit. I didn't see the slightest sense in it. And I think it's largely to blame for the current inflation. I believe that in ten or fifteen years' time we will be back in the European Union's internal market. There is a general feeling of disillusionment with Brexit across the UK," he says. Lowe nods.

The hoods they wore for the Can You Forgive Her video have become a universal symbol of the group.

It's hard to get them back to their music. They prefer to talk about anything else. Its success lies in the perfect blend of melody, electronic rhythm and originality. No one could have imagined, for example, that those foolish hoods they wore on their heads for the video of Can You Forgive Her? , directed by Howard Greenhalgh – against the advice of the label, terrified of an idea they considered ridiculous – would end up being a symbol of the couple's iconoclastic and creative identity. That song described the suffering of a man married to a woman, but unable to admit his own sexual orientation. The catchy rhythm with which the song starts, the chorus and a staging so identifiable with the Pet Shop Boys is the evident proof that the pop created by this band for decades has little ephemeral and much classic.

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