Nov 3, 2021
Nanowrimo #2: Pet Shop Boys
I don’t even need to look at my Spotify Wrapped 2021 data to know who my number one I-spent-way-too-much-time-listening-to-them band is: Pet Shop Boys. What’s crazy is that I was not listening to them, and had not ever listened to them, before just a few months ago.
Yeah, I know Pet Shop Boys have been around for pretty much my entire life, but they just hadn’t ever come across my path. That is, until I became a SiriusXM subscriber. My SO was looking for cool stations and found one that played new wave music, something I had never listened to in my life but took an immediate liking to.
At one point, that station played “Suburbia” and it was the first time I’d heard it. I liked the song but I didn’t think much either way about it and moved on with my day. However, the melody instantly became the earworm that changed my life. It’s all I thought about for the next few days and I fell in love with it even though I couldn’t remember its name. For whatever reason, I didn’t think to ask my SO if he knew what the song was called after humming out a few bars, so I just waited for it to come around again on the Sirius station.
Soon enough, it did (it’s a good song, man)! Once I determined who sang the song, I looked up PSB on Spotify and that was that. As is always the case when I first discover a band, I dove into their most popular tunes and best of playlists. “Suburbia” stuck with me, as did “West End Girls.” Soon after, I undoubtedly ruined my SO’s day by playing the entire “This is the Pet Shop Boys” playlist on a two-hour drive this past July, wherein I found even more songs I liked.
The more I listened to the band’s music, the more I fell in love with it. Between Chris Lowe’s unparalleled skills at the synths making the catchiest beats and Neil Tennant’s dreamy voice and lyrics, I couldn’t get enough. To me, their music is perfect and if music could be a soulmate that band would be mine. God I know that sounds so cheesy and I don’t have a good enough grasp of the English language to properly convey all this (good thing I’m not a professional writer or anything) — I sound like a dumb 14-year-old girl fangirling out over a boy band but really, I don’t care!
They have such a lovely, distinct sound that’s quintessential 80s synthpop goodness. From 1986’s Please up through 2021’s My Beautiful Laundrette, Pet Shop Boys have maintained that sound while still managing to evolve with each decade’s (or year’s) musical sound. That’s incredible! Many bands can’t even do that between their first and second album, let alone for a decades-spanning career.
I recently purchased my first turntable and got a good pair of earbuds, and naturally made a beeline for the synthpop section at all of my local record shops snatching up all of their Pet Shop Boys stock. And when I first listened to Please on vinyl, it blew my mind. I cried! It sounded incomprehensibly good. Like, “I’m low-key still trying to process it” good.
And like a fool, I’ve been freaking out for the past few weeks because Spotify’s Wrapped 2021 is inevitably going to narc on my listening habits. She listened to 500 hours of the Pet Shop Boys? What a freak. Isn’t that band, like, old? They’re kinda cheesy. Why do you like them? But FUCK IT. Whatever. I genuinely, unabashedly love this band and you can’t help who you fall in love with.
That’s it, I guess. I don’t have some poetic take on Pet Shop Boys or their impact on pop culture over the years. I just discovered a band I really REALLY like this year and have enjoyed listening to their entire discography, and I think that’s beautiful. I’m extremely grateful to have discovered PSB and for all of the happiness their music has given me this year because I don’t think that’s a connection many people get to experience in their lifetime. I hope PSB keeps creating music and that more people discover them and enjoy their music.
