Pet Store Boys are as basic to the Nineteen Eighties as shoulder pads and hairspray – however that doesn’t imply they’re caught within the neon decade.
The long-lasting duo, vocalist Neil Tennant, 69, and keyboardist Chris Lowe, 64, are set to launch their fifteenth album, Nonetheless, which they’ve dubbed their ‘queer album.’
Since they shaped in London in 1981, Pet Store Boys have offered greater than 50 million data worldwide, received three Brit awards, and been nominated for six Grammys, and since 1984, they’ve achieved 42 high 30 singles, 22 of them high 10 hits on the UK Singles Chart, together with 4 UK quantity ones.
Now, they’ve determined to make one thing not like something they’ve ever carried out earlier than.
Tennant, who got here out as homosexual in 1994, advised NME that he thinks this album overtly celebrates the queerness that’s at all times been subtly woven by way of Pet Store Boys’ music.
He mentioned: ‘I feel that is our queer album.’
When requested what he means by this, he tells the publication that the album’s closing observe, Love Is The Legislation, is impressed by homosexual Victorian playwright Oscar Wilde’s time in France after he was launched from jail, a interval he spent watching the underground homosexual tradition round him.
Tennant says of the tune: ‘So the language I’m attempting to make use of is of sexual transactions – “commerce,” “trick” – American slang for selecting somebody up.’
One other observe on the album, entitled A New Bohemia, was impressed by a Seventies queer conceptual artwork troupe referred to as Les Petitis Bon-Bons.
If these references weren’t already sufficient to make the album unapologetically queer, there’s additionally the glory gap that’s featured within the video for Loneliness and the dramatic recounting of homosexual ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev’s escape from Russia to the West throughout the Chilly Battle within the observe Dancing Star.
Tennant has beforehand spoken about his worry that being open about his sexuality would confine Pet Store Boys to the label of a ‘homosexual band.’ When requested if he nonetheless fears being pigeon-holed on this manner, he admits that he doesn’t assume trendy homosexual artists can wholly escape being decreased to stereotypes.
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He mentions Troye Sivan, an overtly homosexual pop star, saying: ‘However they are saying, ‘he’s not well-known, he’s gay-famous’. So I’m unsure whether or not your thesis holds up, ‘trigger I feel folks nonetheless assume slightly bit like that.’
He admits that what was as soon as taboo is changing into more and more accepted. He explains, ‘What I feel now could be that what you would possibly name homosexual tradition has grow to be mainstream. A number of years in the past, I went to see Jake Shears in Kinky Boots on Broadway.
‘It was an basically straight viewers, and when the drag queens got here on, all of them went ballistic. I assumed, “Wow, this entire factor’s simply gone completely mainstream—and I feel it’s due to RuPaul’s Drag Race.’
So, how are Pet Store Boys navigating this altering world? Have they managed to stay related? In some methods, they’re having fun with the consequences of the resurgence in cultural curiosity in all issues 80s that has taken place lately.
Their music noticed a spike in streams after Barry Keoghan sang a karaoke model of their tune Hire in Saltburn. All of Us Strangers used the band’s 1987 Quantity One hit, At all times On My Thoughts, as a musical motif all through the movie.
Tennant appreciates the second life these songs are getting, saying: ‘What I like is that in every of these totally different movies, our songs are used as plot factors.’
The frontman isn’t as optimistic concerning the present state of pop music, complaining, ‘Persons are utilizing songwriting as a diary now, nevertheless it’s principally writing about earlier or present companions and dissing them or feeling unhappy about it.
‘One of many nice liberating issues about writing lyrics is you may write in character and fake to be another person. That’s why I feel plenty of pop writing now could be boring as a result of to put in writing about your self assumes you’re attention-grabbing.’
However Tennant isn’t nervous about staying on pattern. He concludes the interview by merely saying: ‘Pet Store Boys are at all times within the period of now.’
Pet Store Boys’ Nonetheless is out April 26.
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