Why PSB albums are titled what they are
Although in most cases I cover the information provided here on the individual pages devoted to each album, I figured it would be nice to collect it all, stated succinctly, in one place. I don't include the various "Tennant-Lowe outside project" albums like Closer to Heaven, Battleship Potemkin, and The Most Incredible Thing because the reasons for those album titles are obvious.
- Please
As famously asserted by Neil, “It's so people can go into the record shop and say ‘Can I have the Pet Shop Boys album, please?'" essentially forcing them to be polite.
- Disco
A contrarian decision by the Boys, it boldly asserted the dance-club appeal of the album's extended remixes while at the same time tweaking the collective nose of the record-buying public (especially in America), for whom the word "disco" had become anathema in the early 1980s.
- Actually
They chose it because "actually" was a word that they used themselves a great deal in conversation—and perhaps more subconsciously because it suggested the veracity of their attitudes as expressed in the album's songs.
- Introspective
In the words of Neil, "All the songs, although it's a dance album, are introspective."
- Behaviour
Probably the single most enigmatic PSB album title. As far as I know, neither Neil nor Chris have ever publicly discussed why they chose this title, leaving fans to speculate. (It has often been observed that the title of the previous album, Introspective, might've been more apt for this one instead.)
- Discography
It was pretty much indeed a PSB singles discography up to that point, with only a couple of obscure/questionable omissions.
- Very
As stated by Neil, "It is called Very… because it is very Pet Shop Boys: it's very up, it's very hi-energy, it's very romantic, it's very sad, it's very pop, it's very danceable, and some of it is very funny…."
- Relentless
Quite simply, according to Neil, they titled it Relentless "because it is."
- Disco 2 (and 3, and 4)
These titles make it clear that, as far as the Boys are concerned, these albums constitute a highly dance-oriented series that had started with the original Disco album.
- Alternative
After abandoning the originally "reserved" title Besides (because someone else had beat them to using it for a similar sort of b-sides collection), Neil and Chris chose Alternative because they believed their single b-sides collectively constituted an "alternate" and often more experimental side of their music—and of course punning on the fact that a b-side is quite literally an "alternate" musical selection to the single's "a-side." The fact that it's an alternative to the previously planned title is figurative icing on the cake.
- Bilingual
Inspired by music the Boys had heard on their recent tour of Latin America, Bilingual alludes to the cross-cultural nature of much of the album's music while at the same time, according to Chris (perhaps facetiously), teasing the word "bisexual."
- Nightlife
Originally thought of as the title for the stage musical they were working on, the Boys and their collaborator on that project, Jonathan Harvey, instead settled on Closer to Heaven. This more or less "freed up" Nightlife as an album title, and seeing as how every song on the album was thematically related in one way or another with nighttime, Nightlife proved a natural choice—despite the fact that the Boys had a song by that title that was not included on the album but would later be released separately.
- Release
Suggested by photographer/videographer Wolfgang Tillmans, the title is a double- or even triple-entendre, referring to, as Neil has put it, "a sense of emotional release about the way the album works.… And it is the Pet Shop Boys' new release," adding, "I guess some people think it sounds lightly sexual, too."
- PopArt
A reference of the dual nature of their work, being both "pop" and "art"—or, as suggested by the way the two CDs are separated into a "pop" disc and an "art" disc, the fact that their individual hits can be viewed as more one than the other.
- Fundamental
As with the previous studio album Release, it's essentially a double-entendre. Neil has noted, "It originally comes from the endless discussions of fundamentalism that we live through at the moment. As ever with an issue like that we then related it to what we do and we wanted to make an album that was very kind of electro, that was fundamentally Pet Shop Boys. It seemed to work on both levels and we like something serious that works as a joke."
- Concrete
As far as I know, neither Neil nor Chris have commented on why they gave their first live album this title. But there are several possible explanations, including it being a near anagram of "concert," a punning suggestion of it being a "concrete" means of "solidifying" their status as live performers, and a reference to the largely concrete concert venue.
- Yes
Inspired by the "Yes we can" slogan of the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign of Barack Obama, the Boys chose this title because of its inherent positivity, which they felt was appropriate given the overall mood of the album.
- Pandemonium
The first instance of the Boys titling an album after one of the songs contained therein, it's an apt choice given the very nature of a live concert, being in some ways indeed pandemoniacal.
- Ultimate
A perhaps presumptuous suggestion that this, their third singles collection, consisting of only a single disc (whereas the previous one, PopArt, had consisted of two), boiled their hits down to the essentials. (If only the title Essential hadn't been used for a 1998 limited edition release in the United States and Japan.) This is something of a deviation from the original meaning of the word, which at one time referred strictly to finality rather than quality or importance.
- Format
Originally Chris's idea, inspired by seeing the word "Format" inscribed in large letters on the side of an industrial building somewhere in Scandinavia. He immediately thought that it would make a good album title, and Neil agreed. "We called it Format because," as Neil described, "when you release a single, you have what the record company calls 'format'." [a reference to the shift from releasing 7-inch vinyl singles to digital singles packages]. …These formats enable you to use the songs you write that you're not going to put on the album."
- Elysium
Chris and Neil came up with the title during a walk in Elysian Park in Los Angeles, the city in which most of the album was recorded. They felt it appropriate given the generally somewhat idyllic mood of the record—Elysium being the Ancient Greek name for the blessed abode of immortal heroes—dealing as it did (as Neil put it) with the current "stage in our life, doing what we do."
- Electric
A purposeful "spinoff" from the preceding Elysium, starting with the same two letters but expressing something completely different, the title alludes both to the highly "electronic" nature of the album's musical style as well to it being "charged" with excitement.
- Super
Chris told an interviewer that he got the title for the album from hearing Germans saying the word "super" a lot, at which time Neil observed that "super" is "an international word" taken from Latin, understood and used by people around the world.
- Inner Sanctum
The fact that the Boys gave this, their third live album, a two-word title—thereby deviating from their otherwise inviolate one-word rule—suggests that they themselves view it more a video release than a true album release, although it did include an audio CD that serves as a live album. Whatever the case, it's obviously titled after the song of that name, which opens the concert.
- Hotspot
Recorded largely in Berlin, the title was inspired by a magazine article that described the city as a "hotspot" of the Cold War, clinched by the fact that the word carries more positive connotations as well, as in a wifi hotspot or a nightclub being a social hotspot.
- Smash
Chris came up with this title, which he and Neil liked for several reasons. First, it struck them as "very Roy Lichtenstein," a famed American pop artist of the 1960s and '70s, whose comic book-inspired artworks often used interjections like "POW!" and "WHAM!" Second, it's a word commonly used to refer to a major hit single, as in "A straight out of the box smash!" Finally, Neil famously once worked as a writer and editor with the U.K. pop-music magazine Smash Hits. Taken together, Smash seemed a logical title for a hits collection.
- Nonetheless
Neil and Chris have pointed out that this title was inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic and its associated lockdowns. It's as if to say, "We've had to deal with all of this. Nonetheless, here's a new Pet Shop Boys album."
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