My all-time favorite one-line descriptions of the Pet Shop Boys
- "The last and best of the British synth-pop fops"
- Rob Sheffield in the Spin Alternative Record Guide (1995). It says so much in so few words.
- "The Popes of Pop"
- I
have no idea who coined this, but I wish it had been me.
- "What a cerebral band"
- Robert Christgau in Christgau's Record Guide:
(1990). Christgau seems to like almost everything our musical heroes do. In fact, he once referred to them as "divine."
- "The most dignified and undemonstrative of visionairies"
- Garry Mulholland in writing about Actually in his 2006 book Fear of Music: The 261 Greatest Albums Since Punk and Disco (where he also includes Introspective and Behaviour amongst the titular 261 choices). It's just so spot-on.
- "The musical equivalent of a very fine wine"
- Nick Duerden in the MTV-Cyclopedia (1997). Yes, it's
a cliché, but it's a very, very nice cliché.
- "The elder statesmen of pop"
- The U.K. Channel 4 website said this in
reference to the pending April 14, 2006 premiere of the "I'm
with Stupid" video. To be sure, it's been said of many others, but it's
nonetheless one of those compliments that an artist must hope will be used to describe
them eventually—they're just not sure they're ready for it when it
comes. It must inspire very mixed emotions.
- "My generation's Paul McCartney and John Lennon"
- A letter-writer quoted in the August 2009 issue of Out magazine, commenting on the preceding issue's PSB cover story. (I won't cite the letter-writer's name here because I don't have his permission to do so and he's not a "public figure.") I've never been bold enough to assert such a thing myself; the closest I've dared is to suggest that Neil and Chris are the best songwriting team since Lennon-McCartney. It may not seem like such a different thing to say, but it's a matter of connotations. Whatever the case, I'd be hard-pressed to think of another songwriting duo who are better qualified for either honorific.
- "The Lennon and McCartney of disco"
- An even less debatable suggestion offered at a surprisingly early date—way back on March 29, 1988—by interviewer Dennis Hunt, writing for the L.A. Times.
- An even less debatable suggestion offered at a surprisingly early date—way back on March 29, 1988—by interviewer Dennis Hunt, writing for the L.A. Times.
- "An ultra-intelligent pop group—an oxymoron they are wise to"
- From the Pet Shop Boys' entry in Andrew Calcutt's 2001 book Brit Cult: An A-Z of British Pop Culture. If you set aside the presumption (and it's a big one) that "ultra-intelligence" and pop music are somehow contradictory, this statement is unequivocally true, despite the author's misuse of the word oxymoron.* Yes, they are wise to it, and that wisdom is one of the main things that, along with sheer talent, has kept them going.
- "The Pet Shop Boys remain in a class of their own"
- The final line of Gary Ryan's glowing five-star review of Electric posted on June 21, 2013 on the Out in the City website. So simple, it would almost qualify as a truism, but that's only the case for us Petheads. It's no less true for anyone else, but it could nevertheless be a revelation. He also offers some pretty nifty one-liners about both Neil ("the mirrorball Noel Coward") and Chris ("'Move aside boys, this is how it’s done'").
- The final line of Gary Ryan's glowing five-star review of Electric posted on June 21, 2013 on the Out in the City website. So simple, it would almost qualify as a truism, but that's only the case for us Petheads. It's no less true for anyone else, but it could nevertheless be a revelation. He also offers some pretty nifty one-liners about both Neil ("the mirrorball Noel Coward") and Chris ("'Move aside boys, this is how it’s done'").
- "Pet Shop Boys are, simply, the greatest electronic-dance act of all time"
- Stated by Jody Rosen in a mid-September 2013 notice in New York magazine about the Boys' upcoming Electric Tour show in New York City. It pretty much says it all right there—though in the same notice they're also described as "living legends" and "the best writers ever to sashay out of Euro clubland."
- Stated by Jody Rosen in a mid-September 2013 notice in New York magazine about the Boys' upcoming Electric Tour show in New York City. It pretty much says it all right there—though in the same notice they're also described as "living legends" and "the best writers ever to sashay out of Euro clubland."
- "Our favorite synth rock bum-outs"
- How Rolling Stone critic Rob Sheffield described PSB in a very positive October 2006 review of their recent concert in New York City. The "bum-outs" reference stems from what Sheffield noted as the pervasive sadness underlying their songs. He also referred to them in the same article as "the Interpol of the Eighties," a metaphor that, despite his subsequent attempt to elaborate, still seems completely unfathomable. My fondness, however, for Sheffield's "Our favorite synth rock bum-outs" description probably comes less from the description itself than from the fact that it was delivered in Rolling Stone, a publication that has often given the Boys positive reviews—well, at least it has following a good deal of negativity during their early years—despite the fact that its critics nearly always leave the impression that they really don't want to give them positive reviews but just can't help themselves.
- How Rolling Stone critic Rob Sheffield described PSB in a very positive October 2006 review of their recent concert in New York City. The "bum-outs" reference stems from what Sheffield noted as the pervasive sadness underlying their songs. He also referred to them in the same article as "the Interpol of the Eighties," a metaphor that, despite his subsequent attempt to elaborate, still seems completely unfathomable. My fondness, however, for Sheffield's "Our favorite synth rock bum-outs" description probably comes less from the description itself than from the fact that it was delivered in Rolling Stone, a publication that has often given the Boys positive reviews—well, at least it has following a good deal of negativity during their early years—despite the fact that its critics nearly always leave the impression that they really don't want to give them positive reviews but just can't help themselves.
- "They are indestructible."
- Critic John Aizlewood's concluding affirmation in his April 1, 2016 review of Super in London's Evening Standard.
- "The Professors of Dance Pop"
- As "DJ FR8-O" labeled them—in deference to their mastery of a musical "formula that's kept [them] relevant way into their golden years"—in his review of Super in the April 14, 2016 issue of the Miami-based gay publication Wire Magazine (not to be confused with the U.K. music publication Wire).
- "The most beautifully sustained art project in pop"
- From the introductory essay by Dorian Lynskey in the booklet for the Pet Shop Boys' July 2016 "Inner Sanctum" residency at London's Royal Opera House. If only more people understood this—or, understanding it, appreciated it.
- "Pop’s most culturally voracious band"
- How journalist Laura Snapes describes them in The Guardian on February 3, 2024. She goes on to explain: "Their immaculate synthpop packages emotion in cosmopolitanism, characterising love and loss via Italian subcultures, the Bolshevik uprising and David Lodge novels. They suggest that it is through culture that we make sense of our lives…."
- How journalist Laura Snapes describes them in The Guardian on February 3, 2024. She goes on to explain: "Their immaculate synthpop packages emotion in cosmopolitanism, characterising love and loss via Italian subcultures, the Bolshevik uprising and David Lodge novels. They suggest that it is through culture that we make sense of our lives…."
*He can hardly be blamed, however, for the misuse. Oxymoron has been misused so often in recent years that arguing against it is like swimming against not merely the tide but a tsunami. For the record, an oxymoron is a figure of speech in which two seemingly contradictory terms are combined for rhetorical and/or poetic effect to express a surprising truth in a "compressed" or metaphorical manner, such as "sweet sorrow" or "fiend angelical" from Romeo and Juliet (which, by the way, is loaded with oxymorons, which Shakepeare used to underscore the "contradiction" of would-be bitter enemies falling in love). That's really not what Calcutt is doing here. The correct terminology to use instead of "oxymoron" would be "apparent contradiction in terms." OK, so I'm a pedant. At least my pedantry doesn't stop me from loving what he had to say about the Boys.
… plus, as a perhaps highly questionable "bonus," my all-time least favorite one-line description of them:
- "Two queens and a drum machine"
- How Pogues frontman Shane MacGowan allegedly once characterized the Pet Shop Boys in reference to the fact that, back in 1987, his "Fairytale of New York" was kept out of the Christmas #1 spot on the British pop charts by "Always on My Mind." If he indeed actually said that (and there does appear to be some uncertainty about it),¹ it's about as bitter and nasty an example of being a sore loser as you're likely to find in popular culture—not to mention nakedly homophobic,² as if the Boys' sexual orientation had more to do with anything other than wounding MacGowan's pride.³
¹Numerous second- and third-hand sources have attributed this quote to MacGowan, but so far I've been unable to find a first-hand source. On the other hand, one first-hand source (the 2005 BBC broadcast The Story of the Fairytale of New York) does feature the Pogues' former manager Frank Murray referring to "Fairytale" having been beaten out of the #1 spot by "two queens and a drum machine." But whether he's the actual original source of that phrase or whether he was simply quoting an earlier notorious statement by MacGowan is uncertain at this time—and in fact may never, after all this time, be indisputably ascertained.
²Perhaps not surprising considering how casually "Fairytale of New York" dishes out the word "faggot." It's been alleged that the word is actually Irish slang for a lazy person—which may in fact be the case—but surely its writer was aware of its broader connotations and chose to employ it anyway. Incidentally, that a song with the lines "Happy Christmas your arse, I pray God it's our last" should repeatedly come out on top in various Irish and U.K. polls of all-time "best" or "favorite" Christmas songs speaks volumes. What those volumes contain, however, I'll leave to others to determine for themselves.
³MacGowan also reportedly said, in a less ad hominem critique (and therefore a much more legitimate one), "The Pet Shop Boys slaughtered 'You Were Always on My Mind' [sic].… That's a great Willie Nelson song, a classic version by Elvis Presley, and they took the piss—out of the song, out of the writers, out of the people who bought it." While I personally disagree that they "took the piss" out of the writers (not Willie Nelson, by the way, who merely covered it) and the people who bought it, I agree wholeheartedly with that assessment of what they did to the song itself—which, I believe, was precisely the point. A song in which its narrator seems to think that his neglected and perhaps even abused lover should draw some consolation from his assurances that she was "always on his mind" deserves to be exposed as callous, insipid, and downright cold. I think the Boys do that quite admirably. Interestingly, on another occasion (again, the BBC's The Story of the Fairytale of New York) MacGowan forthrightly asserted, "I quite liked the Pet Shop Boys before that."
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 Nielsen Business Media, Inc.