new introductory bit here.

This is a reviews page based on my own collection, which just keeps growing despite itself. If it isn't listed here, it's because I don't own it yet, or I haven't gotten around to it yet.

Also, bother your local "new rock" radio station and make sure they are playing "new rock" and not "Rock the Casbah," which is not new.

note: entries in red text indicate my pick for the artist's best available album. A gold numeral indicates the POPocalypse winner of the year's best album; second- and third-place winners are in blue. Green lettering indicates an obviously exploitative record company compilation without apparent artist input.

In America, the Pet Shop Boys were very huge for the mid-to-late 80s before MTV and radio turned away from them. In England, however, they continued a run of top 20 hits that continues to the present and have constantly impressed audiences with their willingness to explore every facet of pop music.

Their debut Please contains the 1986 smash "West End Girls," which came from out of left field and left audiences stunned by just how new it sounded. "Opportunities" was another mammoth hit and the first to be paired with a truly striking and strange video. Not resting on their laurels, the duo, Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe, had a new album out less than a year after promotion for the first ended. actually also featured a pair of huge hits in "It's a Sin" and "What Have I Done to Deserve This?". "Shopping" is mindlessly perfect, "Rent" is beautiful and "King's Cross" is epic and powerful. It's a very highly recommended album.

MTV also got behind the huge 1988 single "Always on My Mind," which wouldn't be the last time Tennant and Lowe reworked a cover to be massively superior to the original. It was made to promote their strange film It Couldn't Happen Here, which flopped in America. Later that year, they had their last American hit with "Domino Dancing" from the album Introspective. Neil and Chris approached the project from an unusual angle: they would reverse the "extended mix" trend of the 1980s. Usually, when a four- minute single was pulled from an album, it would be expanded by remixers to about twice its original length for club play. Purchasers of Introspective found the six songs already at extended length; the versions for radio play were edited down to much shorter "single" versions. There is evidence that this helped derail their US career; mainstream American audiences consider singles to be ads for the album rather than works of their own. Few appreciated buying Introspective to own that nice "Domino Dancing" song and getting an absurd percussive instrumental break in the middle of it, or "Always on My Mind" to hear a radically slower "house" version broken up by an odd rap by Neil midway through the song. American audiences didn't like the remixes, which were, like most remixes from the period, unimaginative and uncreative, and felt cheated that they couldn't hear the version of the song on the radio without tracking down a 7-inch single, when that format was on its final legs and would be abandoned by record stores within two years. While the album sold extremely well in Britain, it proved to be the end of their hit career in America. "Left to My Own Devices" was roundly ignored by US DJs, possibly after receiving complaints about listeners' inability to find the version of "Domino Dancing" they had played.

1990's Behavior was a much slower and more mature album, their most thoughtful work to date. (They should have saved the title Introspective for this one!) The tone, full of morning-after regret and contemplation, was much beloved by critics, but again US radio shied away. An argument could now be made that they simply released too much material for the staid American market too soon; four albums in five years was more than pop programmers were used to. The confrontational image they presented to the US media, with Chris Lowe demanding of DJs why they weren't playing "So Hard," probably didn't help, either. It also wasn't very advisable, if they were trying to win back middle, mainstream America, to cover U2's "Where the Streets Have No Name," available as a single in 1991. No matter how many leagues superior to the original it was (and it was many), to the rawk attitude of radio where U2 were very serious gods of rawk at the time, such a release was treated as a blasphemy.

That was effectively it for their American career. By 1993's Very, Neil and Chris had given up on America, choosing to show off their thunderously bizarre new visual images (all latex, sunglasses, Beatles wigs and pointy hats) almost exclusively in England. The most memorable of their many odd promotional exercises was a BBC performance of "I Wouldn't Normally Do This Kind of Thing" wearing their colorful latex getup and broadcast in 3-D for the "Children in Need" charity. Very spawned five top 20 singles, the best of which was a cover of the Village People's "Go West" which sampled elements of the original and made #2.

Subsequent albums, such as 1996's Bilingual and 1999's Nightlife, have found success in the UK and have enough fans to shift them in America, but sadly without any American media support at all. Bilingual spawned five more top 20 singles but found the duo on the receiving end of some of the harshest reviews they'd ever received. Perhaps they were so concerned with adapting Latin rhythms into their work on this record, they overlooked the sharp, insightful writing which had won them so much praise in the past. That Neil Tennant finally came out of the closet with the release of this album also cost the band column inches from the mainstream media.

Nightlife featured their best work in six years, notably a great single called "I Don't Know What You Want But I Can't Give it Anymore" and "In Denial," a duet with Kylie Minogue. The thumping "New York City Boy" became their highest charting American single of the 90s, but back home a notable erosion had set in. While all the singles made the top 20, their career had gone on longer than many of their peers and the mainstream papers and radio weren't as interested as before. The album only stayed on the British chart for five weeks and "New York City Boy" only made the top 10 because it was released in a slow week in January 2000.

Also available are a pair of remix albums, 1986's Disco and 1994's inferior Disco 2. This second one does at least contain a version of their charity "Absolutely Fabulous" single. (12/02)

PET SHOP BOYS: Discography (****)
This is a very well-assembled collection of their first 18 singles, with sleeve reproductions, production details and liner notes by Neil Tennant. This is how compilations should be done.