Pet Shop Boys - Brief Article

Interview, Jan, 2000

The Pet Shop Boys are doing again what they've done for two decades: making music that moves the body, with heart and wit. Rufus Wainwright finds out how

With their high, dry wit, the Pet Shop Boys have been the Oscar Wildes of the dance floor for almost twenty years now. Just as Wilde's witticisms only partly obscured his intense emotionalism, Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe's wry humor and pop sheen never completely distract us from the heart beating beneath the bpms. We asked singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright, another romantic, to talk to Tennant about the duo's gorgeous new album, Nightilfe (London/Sire). RUFUS WAINWRIGHT: After eight years off the road, are you coming back with a vengeance with your new show?

NEIL TENNANT: Totally. We're doing this big show with a big set design [an angled, brushed-metal platform by noted London architect Zaha Hadid, designer of the Millennium Dome in Greenwich, England]. In the past we used to do theatrical kinds of shows; this is more futuristic and abstract.

Rw: Tell me about your outfits for it.

NT: We've designed a new image. Chris and I never liked looking how we were meant to, as did most people in the music business in the '90s. I think we're old-fashioned in that respect. We feel more secure if we have a uniform we change into for public appearances, to feel larger than life.

Rw: In your video "I Don't Know What You Want but I Can't Give It Anymore," you're re wearing black tape on your eyes and spinning on records.

NT: We're wearing wigs and we got these big black eyebrows to go with the Japanese kabuki suits--they make us look permanently angry. They also make both of us look a bit the same, which I quite like. We're wearing that on stage and we got some new outfits as well.

RW: Do you talk at all in between songs?

NT: I am going to on this tour. I'd like to eventually do a show in a little theater where you sit on a stool and talk to the audience. I'm building up the confidence to do that when I am about seventy-five.

RW: I'm going your way and you're going mine.

NT: You're going towards dance music?

RW: Not right away. I tried it once--I had someone remix a song and it was completely horrid. But that's because he used a lot of backup singers. I always felt a little disconnected from dance music in general.

NT: I find sometimes that I get disconnected from dance music because it's increasingly got very little to do with songs. I'm a song man, so we try to do songs with dance rhythms.

RW: When I was a teenager, it was always interesting to hear the Pet Shop Boys at the dance club because I would be drunk and sad and feeling out of it, and then your song would come on and it would be a dreamy moment where I could be romantic for two seconds.

NT: [laughs] We're very romantic club music. One of the points of what we've done is to appeal to the idea that you want to dance slow, and suddenly you can. It's that feeling of [the Boys' 1987 hit with Dusty Springfield] "What Have I Done to Deserve This?"

RW: I love the song "You Only Ever Say You Love Me When You're Drunk" on the new record. It's really beautiful.

NT: It's one of my favorites. In fact, it's going to be the next single.

RW: Is that sentiment in the title autobiographical?

NT: Yeah. When you're a songwriter there is always this cold part of your brain that says in the middle of any situation, Hmm, that's a good idea for a song.

RW: I also liked that song because I have been on the other side, telling people I love them while I'm drunk, and you do feel like such a heel afterwards.

NT: Our idea of the song is: Is it true or not? Are you saying you love me when you're drunk because you really love me, but you're normally too inhibited, or are you saying it because you're drunk and you're just full of shit?

RW: That's what we've all been trying to figure out all our lives.

NT: It also sounds kind of funny. The title to me really sounds like a country song, so we got a pedalsteel guitar.

RW: You don't use a lot of samples or recognizable sounds.

NT: On this album the fundamental idea was to mix electronic music with strings, so we worked on it with Craig Armstrong, who's a film composer. He did the music for Romeo & Juliet [1996].

RW: So that's a real orchestra?

NT: Yeah, it's a real big orchestra. I've always loved having strings and we wanted to use them not in a big way, but in a very subtle way, to make the harmonies richer.

RW: One of my major problems with dance music is the repetition of melodies. And that's not so much from an artist's point of view, but more from a listener's. I've noticed that you and Chris really put a lot of work into your melodies.

NT: I think the melody, almost always, is the most important part of a song. We like simple melodies that will complicate chord changes. So you've got the rich harmony, then you get a little hokey melody on top of it.

RW: Did you ever write a musical?

NT: We've just written one! It's going to be produced next year. There are a couple of songs on the album from it, including "In Denial," which is a duet between us and Kylie Minogue. We tried to do a musical that's small. It's got a cast of about twelve and it's about contemporary life.