Pet Shop Boys 2025 top 20

[Dog]

Remember when Pet Shop Boys used to post their own annual review to their website - a neat roundup of everything they’d done over the previous twelve months? I always loved those. So here’s my version: a look back at a year that was, technically, a between‑albums lull, yet also somehow incredibly productive. This is my PSB 2025 Top 20.

[Dog]

20. Is This What We Want?

In February, Pet Shop Boys joined more than 1,000 musicians - among them Kate Bush, Annie Lennox and Damon Albarn - in putting their names to Is This What We Want?, a mostly silent digital album protesting the UK government’s proposed changes to copyright law.

In late 2024, the government outlined plans to allow AI companies to train their systems on copyrighted material - music, artworks, writing and more - without securing a licence. If implemented, the UK would become one of the most permissive environments for AI developers anywhere in the world. The album’s tracks, made up of recordings of empty studios and performance spaces, symbolise the potential impact these proposals could have on musicians’ livelihoods.

A vinyl edition - complete with a new silent contribution from Paul McCartney - is now available to preorder. How many PSB completists will be taking the plunge? Creators, unions and cultural institutions are expected to keep up the pressure on this important issue throughout 2026.

[Dog]

19. Hamish Hawk covers So Hard

Back in 2023, Neil expressed his admiration for Scottish musician Hamish Hawk’s “wistful” new track Bridget St John. The song struck a particular chord with him - Bridget St John was a singer-songwriter he and his friends listened to in the early 70s - and Hawk, a devoted PSB fan, was thrilled. Speaking to Loverboy magazine, he said: “What I find exciting and inspiring about bands like the Pet Shop Boys is that they are openly gay without sanitising it. Neil Tennant, as a lyricist, is deeply inspiring to me with his perfect razor‑sharp couplets and incredibly fluid delivery. So, to wake up to that [endorsement] was the best. I’m still living off that feeling.”

I began exploring Hawk’s work for myself, quickly falling for his album Angel Numbers and now equally taken with last year’s A Firmer Hand. His music blends literate, theatrical lyrics with soaring indie melodies.

This August, Hawk returned Neil’s compliment with a beautifully stripped‑back piano cover of So Hard, released on an EP that also features his takes on Madonna’s Burning Up and the Eurythmics’ Sweet Dreams.

If you’re a PSB fan, Hamish Hawk is well worth your time - a kindred spirit operating in a different corner of the pop landscape, but with the same love of language and melody.

[Dog]

18. Music, Money & Mayhem podcast

In September, Neil contributed to a new BBC podcast Music, Money & Mayhem, which explores the collapse of EMI Records and the battle to keep it afloat.

Hosted by filmmaker and journalist Chris Atkins, the series traces Guy Hands’ turbulent takeover of EMI and - as well as Neil and Hands himself - also includes interviews with Ed O’Brien of Radiohead and former EMI UK chief executive Tony Wadsworth.

For decades, EMI helped define British musical culture, home to artists such as The Beatles, Queen, Pink Floyd, Kate Bush, Coldplay and Radiohead. As the new millennium approached, its dominance seemed unshakeable - until the rise of internet piracy and file‑sharing delivered an unprecedented blow to the traditional record‑company model.

Reflecting on the Nightlife era, Neil told the podcast: “The whole piracy thing to me was humiliating. You’d be putting out an album and it would be leaked onto the internet three weeks beforehand. To me there was something fascist about that. You’d made this record and paid for it and someone else decided when it was released. That was just completely and utterly maddening.”

When EMI was eventually sold to Guy Hands - a City financier better known for motorway service‑station deals - a clash between commercial ambition and creative culture became inevitable. The podcast charts the resulting battles between executives, artists and investors as the company’s future hangs in the balance, with the music itself increasingly overshadowed by financial chaos.

Music, Money & Mayhem is a compelling listen: full of insight into an era that not only had a profound impact on Pet Shop Boys but reshaped the entire industry.

[DopeFiend]

Uh, if you're going to post a big write up maybe do it on a blog website. This is a forum for open discussion.
Also, no point in doing separate replies to yourself. That's bad forum etiquette. Do 1 main post and that's it.
Also, PSB are doing an annual review, it's called Annually and is available for preorder now.

[nervousboy]

Carry on Dog. First few parts which are not long are quite interesting to read with or without discussion. Thanks.

[herts101]

Yes. Good read so far. Will check out that EMI podcast. Thanks Dog.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Dog]

17. Arena Homme+ Magazine cover

In November, Pet Shop Boys appeared on the cover of Arena Homme+ magazine, photographed by Alasdair McLellan and dressed head‑to‑toe in Armani - a tribute to the legendary Italian designer, who died on 4 September 2025.

The choice of Armani of course carries a deeper PSB resonance. Paninaro was their ode to the Milanese youth subculture obsessed with designer labels, aspirational style and the glamour of Italian fashion. Armani was one of the defining brands of that scene, its clean lines and understated luxury becoming a visual shorthand for the Paninari’s world. This shoot turned that early fascination with Italian style into a contemporary homage - “Armani, Armani, ah‑ah‑Armani.”

The Arena Homme+ cover also fits neatly into a broader run of recent PSB fashion activity. In 2018, Dior Homme picked Pet Shop Boys to front their SS18 campaign. In 2022, they were filmed and photographed for an advertising campaign promoting the Calvin Klein x Palace collaboration. In 2024, Chris appeared in an 18‑page Arena Homme+ photo story showcasing an Adidas Spezial partnership with CP Company. Across these projects, PSB have continued to blur the lines between music, fashion and visual culture - and it’s fantastic to see them still being recognised as style icons as much as musical ones.

[Dog]

16. Fan community content

It’s been a remarkable year for content created by the Pet Shop Boys fan community. Wayne Studer - the webmaster behind the invaluable Commentary site and a contributor to the 2006 A Life in Pop documentary - published the first Pet Shop Boys volume in the Song by Song book series in October, with the second due in March next year.

PSB, Please - the largest Pet Shop Boys Facebook fan page - continued to go from strength to strength, now approaching an extraordinary 29,000 followers under the enthusiastic stewardship of Stevie Boy Nicholl and Iain Tough.

The Pet Shop Boys Format Facebook page - expertly helmed by Steve Alan Broderick - continued to create and facilitate physical artefacts worthy of the duo themselves, including further issues of the hardback fanzine Publication, and even plugging a major catalogue gap with their own unofficial Electric live Blu‑ray release, lovingly curated and edited by Jorge Cabrera.

And In Depth - the fan podcast I co‑host with Graham (G_Goalden from this very forum) - also reached new heights in what has been our most productive year yet. We featured exclusive contributions from PSB collaborators and even received a shout‑out from the official Pet Shop Boys website and social channels. We’re now one of the highest‑rated fan podcasts around, scoring 4.9 on both Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Expect more new episodes in 2026!

[Dog]

15. Very Thames skateboard decks

In their most unexpected merchandise mash‑up since 2024’s fine bone china tea set, Pet Shop Boys partnered with THAMES MMXX to produce two limited‑edition skateboard decks inspired by the Very era. Each deck featured striking 1993 portraits of Neil and Chris in their full blue‑and‑yellow Go West cyber‑surfer outfits.

All 150 hand‑numbered boards sold out within hours, snapped up by collectors, skaters, and fans who couldn’t resist the collision of high‑concept pop and street cool. Whether any of them will ever actually touch a skatepark remains to be seen; the smart money says most will be displayed proudly on walls rather than tested on half‑pipes - good news for the world’s A&E departments!

[Patrick Bateman]

I started watching the start of their South Bank Show the other day and what struck me was how Neil said pop music was all about being new. Chris was even slagging off rock musicians in their forties. I know they're a long way from that manifesto now but there is something a bit depressing about the same group re-releasing old stuff, flogging random tat and seeming to be the antithesis of their former selves.

That's obviously accentuated by it being a year when they didn't release a new album (and I like Nonetheless) but to me it's been a year of repackaging and reselling the old.

[g_m]

Uh, if you're going to post a big write up maybe do it on a blog website. This is a forum for open discussion.
Also, no point in doing separate replies to yourself. That's bad forum etiquette. Do 1 main post and that's it.
Also, PSB are doing an annual review, it's called Annually and is available for preorder now.

Amazing. Somebody's been at the Christmas sherry! How about if you don't like this post then just don't read it? Simple.

[FormerEnfantTerrible]

Loving this deep dive, Dog. You just made me aware there was more PSB activity this year than I even knew. I wasn't aware that PSB themselves did a yearly top 20. Until what year did they do that?

[Dog]

Loving this deep dive, Dog. You just made me aware there was more PSB activity this year than I even knew. I wasn't aware that PSB themselves did a yearly top 20. Until what year did they do that?

Thanks FET! They didn’t do a top 20 - just a brief post spelling out the main things they’d been up to. They seemed to stop during Covid.

[Dog]

14. Catalogue reissues

Following 2023’s SMASH and Relentless, Parlophone’s Catalogue team continued to deliver with further archival releases. In May, a limited transparent‑blue edition of Discography hit the shelves - its first vinyl pressing since 1991.

In July, attention turned to Pet Shop Boys’ first six studio albums, reissued on CD in contemporary card sleeves. The shift away from jewel cases is in line with new industry trends: card packaging is more environmentally responsible, takes up less space, and is better suited to modern shelving and storage. New gatefold designs gave these classic albums a refreshed visual identity.

Looking ahead, fans remain hopeful that the next phase of the catalogue campaign will finally bring the group’s full back‑catalogue of single versions, remixes and edits to streaming platforms. It’s a long‑promised step that would complete the picture - bringing the meticulous care shown in their physical releases into the digital space, and making decades of hard‑to‑find mixes accessible to a wider audience than ever before.