On May 2 the Pet Shop Boys appear at Heaven nightclub in London, playing a four song set as part of Can You Bear It?, a benefit for Dainton Connell’s family. For the final song they are joined by Suggs and Carl from Madness, in rambunctious high spirits, to perform a dance version of Madness’s “My Girl”: “It was a very emotional night”.
On October 27 a Pet Shop Boys-produced single by the British artist Sam Taylor-Wood, “I’m in love with a German film star”, is released on the cult German dance label Kompakt. It is the Pet Shop Boys’ third collaboration with Sam Taylor-Wood though the previous one was released under the pseudonym Kiki Kokova. The song is an electronic reinterpretation of the 1981 single by the Passions, a suggestion of Neil’s.
This year’s annual Christmas single from the Killers — “Joseph (Better You Than Me)” — is originally planned as a collaboration between The Killers and Elton John. Neil gets involved after Brandon Flowers asks for help with the lyric; in the end Neil’s short section of guide vocal for the lyric he contributes will remain in the final song when it is made available for download.
Behaviour is released.
The Pet Shop Boys receive the World Arts Award in Hamburg, Germany. The award is presented to them by Mikail Gorbachev, whose daughter later tells them that she used to play their records as a teenager living in the Kremlin.
Dallas, Texas, is tonight’s stop on the Fundamental Tour.
The Boys continue work at the Xenomania studios on their next album. Today they record background vocals with a small chorus of at least a dozen singers, among them Bob Stanley of Saint Etienne.
Having spent five days in Peru, Chris and Neil board a flight at the Lima Airport, ending their 2009 tour of South America. This was to have been the date of the Pet Shop Boys’ Pandemonium Tour concert in Caracas, Venezuela. Unfortunately, it had been canceled a little more than two weeks beforehand, with the promoter formally citing ‘razones de logística que afectan la realización del espectáculo’ (‘reasons of logistics that affect the actualization of the show’).
The Pet Shop Boys are guests on Ken Bruce’s BBC2 radio show this morning for the ‘world radio premiere’ of their new single, ‘Together.’
They perform this evening in Salt Lake City.
To mark the forthcoming publication of his book One Hundred Lyrics and a Poem, Neil takes part in a live onstage conversation, simulcast over the internet, with writer Michael Bracewell at Evolutionary Arts Hackney (EartH, formerly the Hackney Arts Centre).