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I've Been Cited!

Aside from scattered links on other PSB websites (many of which are noted on my own Links page), my website has been cited a number of times by assorted "non-PSB" sites and publications. I note many of them below.

The single citation that I'm most proud of, however, occurred on November 17, 2003, when the Pet Shop Boys themselves mentioned my website during a live webchat sponsored by BBC Radio 2 (an image from which appears at the right). In response to a fan's question, "What do you think of the many unofficial websites devoted to you?" Neil first provides some generalities ("I think it's good. It's amazingly flattering.") and then talks about 10 Years of Being Boring, which he very aptly describes as "fantastic!" Then he says—

Neil: And there's a guy in America who's done one that's called "Pet Shop Boys Song-by-Song Commentary," and he's an author, and he's gone through every single song we've ever done, and talked about it and discussed it, and his conclusions are quite often wrong, but it's an amazingly thorough piece of work, and he updates it all the time—

Chris: And what's that one with all the lists? — What's that one, where he lists everything—the Top Ten—

Neil: That's him!

Chris: Oh, it's the same one?—oh, it's great, that one, and what I like is: "Ten reasons how the Pet Shop Boys wrecked their career in America"—and they're all right—you go through them—yeah, yeah, yeah—

Neil: 100% true!

I'm extremely honored and, frankly, thrilled that Neil and Chris have visited my site, have read much of what I've written, and seem to feel so positively about it, my "wrong conclusions" and all. And, in case you're interested, elsewhere I do provide my comments on Neil's assertion that my "conclusions are quite often wrong."

Years later—on September 22, 2009, to be precise—I received a similar citation (though not mentioned by name) in an interview with Neil by Tom Lanham for the San Francisco Examiner. Here's the pertinent excerpt:

Fans also helped the singer with his theories. For example, one with a song-commentary Web site listed "Ten things the Pet Shop Boys did to commit career suicide in America."

"It’s hilarious, but totally true," Tennant says. "Because Chris and I have never thought about having a career, never sat down and thought, 'What are we going to do next?' Something just always turns up."

In addition, right near the end of the Boys' April 25, 2024 appearance on the Talk Art podcast, Neil credited my website with regard to the official PSB site drawing upon my "On This Day in Pet Shop Boys History."

The Permanent Record Podcast hosted by Brian and Sarah Linnen, which deals with New Wave and Classic Rock music, focused on the PSB album Introspective for its two-art October 25 and November 5, 2018 editions (Episodes 69-70). Along the way, they mention me and my website several times—often, I'm pleased to say, in quite glowing terms—including a fairly lengthy segment quoting from and discussing my commentary on "I Want a Dog."

Each issue of the British men's style/fashion magazine Man About Town features a "theme." Issue #10, for instance, is "The Dog Issue." And the next issue, #11 (published, I believe, in late 2012), is "The Gay Issue." (Hmmm….) It includes an article about and interview with the Pet Shop Boys, during the course of which it makes the following reference to yours truly:

Even taking into account the rather solipsistic musical environment Tennant and Lowe inhabit, the new album Elysium is something of an island. Pet Shop Boys fans tend to be very keen on picking apart the Pet Shop Boys lyrics and pronouncements (see Geowayne.com for a comprehensive breakdown of every Pet Shop Boys song ever released by one Wayne Studer PhD)…[.]

A grammatical quibble about a somewhat misplaced adjective phrase (positioned as if it were an adverb phrase) would be both trifling and ungrateful of me.

Meanwhile, here are some other scattered citations that I'm aware of:

• The Wikipedia article on the PSB album Actually cites me in its very first paragraph with regard to a statement I make here on this website (in writing about the much later song "Twenty-something") about how Actually is, among other things, a critique of Thatcherism.
  
  
• I've been cited on the marvelous TV Tropes website (a pop-culture must-visit site) as an example of a BNF: a "Big Name Fan" (aka a "Fandom VIP")—that is, someone who has gained a degree of notoriety specifically on account of his or her being a well-known fan of someone or something. What a hoot! Incidentally, the TV Tropes site includes a delightful Pet Shop Boys section that lists lots of examples of "tropes" in their songs. The person(s) who wrote it are clearly major PSB fans themselves who, I strongly suspect, have drawn quite a bit on my website for info. Not that I mind at all: that's what I'm here for.
  
  
• The 2024 book The Pet Shop Boys and the Political, edited by Bodie A. Ashton, mentions this website and me in its "Acknowledgements":

  A special thank you must go to Wayne Studer. Many Pet Shop Boys fans will know Wayne from his website, Commentary, which contains an absolutely prodigious amount of information about every Pet Shop Boys song and album. Wayne was also extremely kind in making himself available to answer impromptu and sometimes arcane questions, and Iknow that it is not just me who has benefitted from his knowledge while putting this book together.

  My website and I are also cited on another occasion in the main body of the book's text, and I'm referenced a number of times in its footnotes and bibliographies.
  
  

• A May 2024 special edition of Classic Pop magazine devoted to Pet Shop Boys Volume 2 (because there was another PSB special edition some years before) mentions and quotes this website in reference to the song "Monkey Business."
  
  
• In 2023, a pair of PSB fans, Graham and Chris, posted a marvelous six-episode series of podcasts they titled In Depth (available on Spotify and elsewhere), in which they discussed the Boys' music, lyrics, and career at length. When extending thanks to various people at the close of the final episode, they mentioned me by name and called out this website as "a fantastic resource for Pethead information."
  
  
• The Imperica website, which describes itself as "an online magazine which covers topics in and around contimporary culture," took notice of my site on July 19, 2019, and offered this delightful summation:

  The Incredible Pet Shop Boys Discography Analysis Motherlode: Do you like a particular artist or band? I mean really like, to the point of having gone to see them more than a dozen times in concert, perhaps having named a kid after them, that sort of thing? However much of a fan you are, I can guarantee you that you don’t like them as much as this person likes the Pet Shop Boys – or, if you do, you’re certainly not putting the same amount of effort into demonstrating your affection. This is… amazing; the navigation is a bit iffy, but just click on the ‘Where do you want to go?’ text in the top left and MARVEL at the wealth of insight available in the drop-down. You want analysis and commentary on every single PSB single and album they have EVER released? GREAT! Honestly, this is obsessionally brilliant – Wayne Studer Phd, I salute your indefatigable endeavour here, you are a fabulous madman.

  "A fabulous madman"—I like that. Unfortunately, this issue no longer appears to be available online.
  
  

• The U.K.-based celebrity and media gossip mailing list Popbitch linked to my site sometime in July 2019 under the header "Everything you wanted to know about Pet Shop Boys but was afraid to ask."
  
  
• A special August 2017 edition of the U.K. magazine Classic Pop devoted to Elton John quotes me regarding the PSB/Elton collaborative remake of "Alone Again, Naturally":

  As the Pet Shop Boys' definitive biographer [sic] Wane [sic] Struder [sic] observes, the original is "so overwrought… that it begs for either scorn or a camp interpretation (or both).… But I don't detect a hint of scorn or camp in this rendition," he adds. "The Boys and Elton play it straight, so to speak, leaving it totally up to us how to react. And any reaction would surely reveal more about the listener than it does about the songwriter and performers."

  I don't mind so much that they misspelled my name, although this is the first time I'm aware of that someone has misspelled both my first and last. And I hardly think I qualify as the Boys' "biographer," definitive or otherwise, but it's kind of them to credit me as such.
  
  
• Seeing as how Very is my all-time favorite Pet Shop Boys album (and one of my five favorite albums of all time by any artist), I'm elated that a marvelous Australian podcast from February 2017, which focuses specifically on that album, mentions me and my website on more than one occasion, and even quotes me at one point with regard to the song "Liberation."
  
  
• An April 2020 episode of the podcast Discord & Rhyme (the title of which is borrowed from the lyrics of Duran Duran's "Hungry Like the Wolf") focuses on the Pet Shop Boys album Bilingual. Podcastmaster Rich Bunnell was kind enough to give my website a shoutout (at about the 19-minute mark he credits me as a source of info) and a link.
  

• A French correspondent, Stéphane, alerted me to the fact that Vincent Laufer's 2003 French-language book Pet Shop Boys de A à Z ("Pet Shop Boys from A to Z") mentions my website as among some online "curiosities", writing as follows: "…Pet Shop Boys Commentary (www.geowayne.com/psbhtml.htm) dont le concepteur commente tous les morceaux écrits ou interprétés par les Pet Shop Boys" ("…whose originator comments on all of the works written or interpreted by the Pet Shop Boys"). (Thanks, Stéphane!)
  
  
• Fellow PSB Community Forum member Roy informed me—much to my surprise—that an article focusing on my website had appeared on May 26, 2003 in a Thai newspaper called The Nation. (Thanks, Roy!) An online copy of this article is apparently no longer available, but its author, Xavier Galland, quoted a good deal of my homepage and then concluded, "If you like the PSB don't miss this site."
  
  
• Several correspondents (though Leon was the first—thanks!) alerted me to the fact that Issue 69 (July 2002) of the U.K. publication City Lights appears to make an oblique reference to my website in the lengthy opening sentence of an article by Ewa Kowalski about the Pet Shop Boys titled "Lowe and Behold":

Variously hailed as "danceable synth-pop meisters," "satirical melodits," and "intellectual post-modern camp ironists," the Pet Shop Boys have provoked increasingly entertaining definitions from the pop press as well as achieving international chart success, attracting a following of devoted Pet-Heads world-wide, and inspiring web sites by Ph.D'd-up fans musingly analysing their lyrics [my emphasis].

Gosh—despite my degree, I've never thought of myself as "Ph.D'd-up" before. But, as far as I know, this is the first mention of my site in "real print" (as opposed to "e-print"), so I really appreciate the apparent reference.

• The Euroflash - For the Love of Music site, dedicated to "Euro disco" (and "Italo disco" in particular) has honored me greatly by describing my site as follows: "Outstanding web site created by Wayne Studer. Arguably, one of the most intelligent and informative sites about a pop group, ever." Not being accustomed to such high praise, I'm blushing as I type this.
  
  
• The November 2003 edition of J.D. Doyle's marvelous Queer Music Heritage referred in a very complimentary fashion both to my book Rock on the Wild Side and to this website.
  
  
• Speaking of Rock on the Wild Side, there are several Wikipedia pages that cite me via that book, among them entries for the song "All the Young Dudes," the film Ode to Billy Joe, and both Steven Grossman and his album Caravan Tonight. Wikipedia also cites me quite often—at least twenty times, too many to delineate here—concerning assertions or observations I've made in that book or on this website, or even regarding a few other aspects of my career. It's probably needless to say that I find that highly gratifying.
  
  
• The June 26, 2002 entry at Angry Robot made complimentary mention of my website. Unfortunately, that citation seems to be no longer available online.
  
  
• Alejandra Velera de Barrett's diverse and charming blog "injust-spring" (which now appears to be defunct) mentioned and quoted from my site during the week of May 27, 2002. She even called it "brilliant"!
  
  
• John Robinson's Sore Eyes (as in "a site for." — oh, how I love puns like that!) cited my site on April 12, 2002. This blog doesn't seem to be online any longer.
  
  
• The April 10, 2002 entry of David Gaston's blog "I Love Everything"—another blog that now appears to be missing in action—also mentioned and quoted from my site.
  
  
• Way back on May 10, 2001, the online music magazine VitaminC praised my website. But it, too, seems to have vanished, so I guess you'll just have to take my word for it.
  
  
• Lilly Tao's entertaining girlhacker.com blog mentioned my site on April 9, 2001. She doesn't have much to say about it one way or the other—but, then again, if she didn't like it, she probably wouldn't have mentioned it at all.
  
  
• Karin L. Kross's site "hanging-fire.net" favorably mentioned my site in passing during her intriguing June 26, 2002 discussion of what several Pet Shop Boys songs mean to her personally. Alas, it too now seems to be lost in the mists of cyber-time.
  
  
• Andrew J. Cosgriff's blog The Monkey Puzzle mentioned me and my site the very next day, June 27, 2002, in reference to "Tonight Is Forever." ("Monkey Puzzle" is the popular name for a species of tree—Araucaria araucana, also known as the Chilean pine, native to Chile but planted widely around the world as an ornamental—with branches that twist and overlap so intricately that it would "puzzle a monkey" to make his way through them. It also has rather sharp, spiny leaves. A metaphor for life, no doubt.)
  
  
• I'm amazed at the tendency of blogs to form "spontaneous webchains," if I may coin a phrase. On December 16, 2004, the Yale Free Press blog provided a user-submitted link to my website. The next day, December 17, Eve Tushnet's blog referred to that link and added that my site was "Neat!" Again, a day later (December 18), a blog titled "Dappled Things" (which now appears to be defunct; the title came from a Gerard Manley Hopkins poem), run by young Roman Catholic priest in northern Virginia, had a reference to Eve's link to my site, described it as "this awesome site that has commentary on the opera omnia of the Pet Shop Boys," and noted my observation that Neil is, after all, a "lapsed Catholic." I love it! Besides, I'm impressed as all get-out by anyone who can so blithely toss around arcane terms like "opera omnia"—which, incidentally, means "all works" in Latin.
  
  
• An Iranian journalist and multimedia designer named Hossein Derakhshan once had a blog apparently titled "Editor: Myself." I say "apparently" because I have to go on somebody else's word on this since I can't read one iota of Farsi (aka Persian), the language in which the title and much of the site overall was written. At any rate, he offered a link to my website on January 5, 2002. It, too, is now gone from the web.
  
  
• Peter Torr's blog, originally titled "Office Development, Security, and Randomness" but now renamed HD DVD/Randomness, glowingly mentioned and linked to my site on November 7, 2004. You know, I've grown quite fond of this whole blog thing….
  
  
• They got the title wrong, but it's the thought that counts: cool pop-culture obsessive Freaky Trigger cited my site quite favorably on September 10, 2003.
  
  
• Not surprisingly, I'm delighted by what the "According to Doyle" website—which is devoted to "Ranking Music, Art, Everything"—had to say, in July 2018, about my website during some introductory comments to a ranking of PSB singles: "… his work is well researched, well written, and engaging. I encourage you to make it a regular source of information about the Pet Shop Boys."
  
  
• A "fanblog" devoted to U2, U2log.com, mentioned and quoted from my site (regarding—what else?—"Where the Streets Have No Name") on January 31, 2004. Perhaps surprisingly, the author doesn't seem to mind at all the Boys' somewhat satirical approach. By contrast, a personal friend of mine who happens to be a major U2 fan still hasn't forgiven them.
  
  
• "Sweeping The Nation: Treating music as seriously as it deserves to be treated, i.e. barely at all" on June 4, 2007 describes my site as "the daddy of them all"—"all" being fansites devoted to discussing the music of a particular artist. I'm flattered, especially since I've always felt I would have made a great daddy (if that had been a more viable option for openly gay men 30-odd years ago). I do suspect the author's being just a tad snarky, however, when he refers to my site as "catchily titled."
  
  
• Stephen Gregson's Ph.D. thesis, titled Narrative, spectacle, performance: a dramaturgical investigation into the relationship between an aesthetic event and the social world in rock and pop culture, is available for your rather lengthy reading pleasure online. I mention this fact because it cites my website on pages 90-91. (If you click on the link, you may need to be patient; it's a big honkin' thing, so unless you have a very high-speed Internet connection, it takes some time to open.)
  
  
• The German magazine Spex mentioned my website very favorably (even calling it "fantastischen"—fantastic) in conjunction with a review of Electric (its "album of the issue") in its July/August 2013 edition.
  
  
• On July 18, 2014 the Finnish publication Nyt featured an article by Anu Silfverberg about my website, for which she had conducted a telephone interview with me about a week or so beforehand. (This article appeared in conjunction with the Pet Shop Boys concert that same evening in Pori, Finland.)
  
  
• Though it inaccurately referred to me as a "Ph.D. student"—I received my Ph.D. back in 1984 and haven't been a "student" since—an August 6, 2014 online BBC article about classical influences on pop music mentioned and linked to my website's list of PSB songs based on classical compositions.
  
  
• Dedicated Erasure fan Melanie B, who maintains the Erasure Picnic Instagram site and its Tumblr "supplement," has cited one of my old surveys on the subject of prospective Erasure/PSB collaborations. She refers to Erasure and the Pet Shop Boys collectively as "the fascinating frenemies of synth," which I think is delightful!
  
  
• Other blogs that have referred to my site include the following (but those without a link now appear to be defunct or otherwise unavailable):
  • Gibberations (January 9, 2002)
  • Ambertower (January 23, 2002)
  • Snow Angel in Houston (aka Big Pink Cookie) (January 26, 2002)
  • The Null Device (June 27, 2002)
  • Gimboland (June 27, 2002)
  • Lots of Co. (September 12, 2003)
  • Angus Logan's Link Blog (November 8, 2004)
  • Vast. Right. Winged. (December 16, 2004)
  • Do You Feel Loved? (Links page)
  • Thieves in the Temple (March 14, 2005)
  • James Mok's Soliloquy (May 27, 2005)
  • A Grand Illusion (September 30, 2005)
  • Tremble Clef (May 19, 2006)
  • Randy McDonald's Livejournal (June 15, 2005 and June 29, 2006)
  • kovu's blog (June 26, 2006)
  • J.C.Q. (October 4, 2006)
  • BeaucoupKevin(dot)com (November 28, 2006)
  • Daddy or Chips? (December 21, 2006)
  • Total Music Geek (April 28, 2008)
  • Bleeps and Booms (August 25, 2009)
  • Give 'em the old Razzle Dazzle (July 10, 2011)
    

Incidentally, don't you just love the wonderfully imaginative names that people give their blogs? They make my website title "Commentary" sound so boring. Maybe I should change it to something like—say—Opera Omnia.

• I was quoted in reference to "I'm Not Scared" on the now-missing "Grapefruit Online" site.
  
  
• My site was mentioned on the Hacker News discussion site, where it triggered dozens of comments—mostly positive, I'm pleased to say.
  
  
• A "sci-fi, comedy, and sci-fi comedy" blog titled The Review Nebula by Starbug1729 mentions and offers a standing link to my site because the webmaster happens to be a PSB fan and he apparently likes what I do. I like what he does, too.
  
  
• The October 2002 issue of the e-zine Anvil cites me in reference to "Miserablism."
  
  
• Although he doesn't appear actually to mention me, I'm nevertheless pleased that Slovakian blogger Tam Hanna linked to my site in reference to a PSB lyric from the song "Up Against It."
  
  
• An online article for 5 Magazine, "God’s Co-Producer: The Wacky World of Bobby O," doesn't actually mention me, but it does link to a relevant page here on my website.
  
  
• Similarly, a review by Dave Simpson of a PSB concert in the May 21, 2022 online edition of the U.K. newspaper The Guardian also doesn't actually mention me but rather links to another of this website's pages.
  
  
• A "Web Bizaar [sic] Archive" page (describing itself as "Our collection of weird links")—part of the website for the South by Southwest Music and Media Conference (SXSW) 2004—once linked to my site without any further commentary, along with dozens of others, including "Jesus Was Gother Than You" and "Max the Maggot." That, however, no longer seems to be the case. I really don't mind so much my site having been referred to as a "weird link" (it's not the first time), although I would think that if anyone were going to describe other people's websites as "weird" they would at least go to the trouble of looking up the correct spelling of the word "bizarre" or "bazaar." Or perhaps I should give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they were trying to come up with a clever coinage—a "bizarre bazaar," so to speak. I find it fascinating, however, the way people so casually regard other people's interests as "weird." I don't imagine they would regard a Bruce Springsteen website as "weird." You won't get me to say in public whether I would.
  
  
• By the way, I find it more than a little ironic that, as best I can tell, my most often quoted line—having appeared on more than a dozen different websites—has nothing to do with the Pet Shop Boys or even with my once-upon-a-time broader area of musical analysis, "gay male images in pop music of the rock era," but rather it's a passing observation that appears on another page of this website in reference to Genesis keyboardist Tony Banks. I write there that I consider him to have been "the most tasteful keyboardist of prog rock," a comment that has been picked up, quoted, and re-quoted by various online writers and bloggers. I envision the more curious Genesis fans reading that quote, conducting an online search for me, and (once they've weeded me out from the other dozen or so "Wayne Studers" one can find online—who'd have thought there'd be so many?) experiencing shock and dismay when they discover where my more specific interests really lie. Unless, of course, they happen also to be Pet Shop Boys fans. In that case, I hope their reaction proves to be one of delight.
  
  
• Finally, I'm especially pleased and proud of the fact that Yahoo! cited my site as one of their "Picks of the Week" (April 9, 2001) and "Picks of the Year 2001" (though I can no longer find the links, doggone it).
  
  
  

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All text on this website aside from direct quotations (such as of lyrics and of other nonoriginal content) is copyright © 2001-2024 by Wayne Studer. All Rights Reserved. All lyrics and images are copyright © their respective dates by their respective owners. Brief quotations and small, low-resolution images are used for identification and critical commentary, thereby constituting Fair Use under U.S. copyright law. Billboard chart data are copyright © their respective dates by Billboard Media, LLC.