PET SHOP BOYS by Gary Williams

Pet Shop Boys

by Gary Williams

One of my big memories in life is watching the ITV Chart Show, I was nine and I remember seeing Pet Shop Boys, big, bright and brash, singing Go West in a hyper-pop CGI world. It scared the living shit out of me. They might as well have been Doctor Who monsters. But it wasn’t the Dali-esque pop art visuals, it was just how gay it all was that made me turn it off before it reached the end.

I was scared at how loud they were being, how obviously queer they were to me and how they might have been broadcasting my secret to everyone else in the world. Whilst some people saw Suede or Morrissey or David Bowie or Marc Almond or Pet Shop Boys and thought “Great, there’s someone else out there like me” and put their posters straight on the bedroom wall and idolized them, I didn’t. I had the opposite reaction. And I’ll always be a little jealous of people who had that relationship with a myriad of wonderful, androgynous pop stars who challenged gender and sexuality through music and MTV visuals. I just switched the TV off and hid it and hid myself away for years.

So it was wonderful in later life to slowly regain my relationship with myself as a gay man, to make it a positive thing, to make it something that gave me strength, gave me friends, gave me creativity, love and a community. At the same time as this I found I started to let Neil and Chris into my life. Their work isn’t just Go West or Always on My Mind - bombastic and camp and known by your whole family (one of the songs became a football anthem and one was Christmas number one) – it’s also the quiet, emotional masterpiece Behaviour and an album of 12” house anthems in Introspective (probably my two favourite PSB albums). Last year they turned out a near-perfect Stuart Price produced EDM album, Electric.

The reason I love them now is why I didn’t when I was younger. Neil’s voice is instantly queer, with it’s femininity, frailty and inate intelligence (I often think Neil’s cool, androgynous voice is the reason some people don’t like the band), the pairing of two seemingly unknowable men is very attractive to a man who knows himself a little better. They stand on a stage almost as a gay couple - one a cold, art school brainiac up front and the other a silent Blackpool bruiser into his dance music and synths. Most couples are like this - I’d be the louder Neil in our relationship and my boyfriend would be the quieter Chris, on the back playing keyboards but doing most of the work really. And they stand there and let their work speak for them, often sneering at you, not showing any emotion so you can use yours to engage with their songs. Their work, like disco can come across as big, daft and camp - the popular stuff certainly is - but there’s so much more soul when you take the time to listen to more. Every lyric is poured over and as singer-songwriter as any indie idol; every beat is made to make you dance. They write witty, emotional and Northern dance music. What’s not to like?

There’s a line that always makes me smile when I think about the Pet Shop Boys and my relationship with them, from frightened child to confident adult who gets to put on amazing parties and events for a living and I shall close this little blog post with it and, I hope, on this Pride weekend, you can judge yourself successfully against this lyric as an LGBT person like I have had the pleasure to:

“I never dreamt that I would get to be the creature that I always meant to be”

That line is from their best song Being Boring. If you've ever dismissed them like I did, let me tell you...there’s a lot to be learnt from the UK’s most successful pop duo of all time.


Gary Williams is an events producer and promotor from Manchester. He is one quarter of Drunk At Vogue and also runs gay dance night Hot Space.