| Pet Shop Boys |
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 Your new album entitled ‘Yes’ was released at the end of last month. Who was responsible for the title?  Neil: It’s sort of one of the jokey Pet Shop Boys titles like ‘Have you got Pet Shop Boys, Please?’ It’s pathetic really but if you go on and ask for this you could say, ‘Yes, Pet Shop Boys.’ Also, it comes from the Yoko Ono exhibition. John Lennon walks up the stepladder, gets the magnifying glass and reads the paper hanging there and it says ‘Yes’. I’ve always been slightly impressed by that. The album was produced with production house Xenomania who are associated with pure pop outfits like Girls Aloud and Sugababes, why did you opt for them? Chris: Well Neil introduced me to their production through Girls Aloud because he really liked Biology and then I listened to them and thought ‘Wow, great pop productions and really fresh’. We’d already thought of working with them for the last album but New Order got there first so we didn’t want to copy. This album is a lot more poppy so it made sense to go with the best pop producers there are around at the moment. It’s been a big year for the Pet Shop Boys. A new album out and in February bagging the Outstanding Achievement Award at the Brits. How did that feel? Chris: It was really nice of the music industry to give it to us really. Neil: We have a slightly funny relationship with the idea of awards ceremonies because there’s something slightly arbitrary about winning an award but this one was certainly nice! The Outstanding Achievement Contribution Award at the Brits is usually sort of a rock thing so it was great going to something overtly pop for a change. It seemed sort of appropriate because 2009 means it’s been twenty five years since we first released and recorded West End Girls, plus it’s very rare to get twelve minutes of live television. Ok, getting on to the album itself then. Love Etc is the first single, how did that come about? Neil: It’s actually a track that Brian and Miranda (Xenomania) were keeping for a solo project but Chris kept saying to me, ‘I like that track they’re keeping, it’s the best one, I think’ and so I was despatched to say to Brian ‘Can we just get that sort of swingy sounding track up again?’ Anyway, we managed to wrestle it from their solo project and into our album and then I came up with the idea of ‘You don’t have to be beautiful but it helps’. It has a roughhouse chant on it – ‘Don’t have to be’ – almost an echo of Chumbawamba’s ‘I get knocked down’ quite uncharacteristic of your usual style. Neil: I know what you mean. It was intended to sound like a chant. We like the sentiment of this song because it’s against the current materialistic, celebrity obsessed, Beverley Hills kind of life-style that’s been so prevalent in the media over the last ten years. It’s basically saying, all you need is love so it’s sort of a hippy sentiment in a way saying money can’t buy me love, to return to the Beatles. Chris: You can relate to it, anyone can. It’s a universal idea and I’m an old hippy anyway. Well, nicely dressed, care about clothes and cleanliness but deep down I’m a hippy. 
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