Pet Shop Boys and the art of the CD single
David Quantick on Pet Shop Boys’ loyalty to the physical single
The Pet Shop Boys, the world’s only heritage dance act, have recently released their final single, ‘New London Boy’, from their 2024 album Nonetheless. ‘New London Boy’ received some airplay on Radio 2, the home of the older pop person, and gave Nonetheless a well-deserved extra chart boost: but for me that’s not the particular joy of this event.
It has been pointed out to me that ‘New London Boy’ is the fifth single from the album which means, not that it’s another 99p track on iTunes, but that no less than 27 non-album tracks have been released this year by the Pet Shop Boys on their single releases. 27! That’s more songs than some people’s careers. That’s about 75% of, say, BlackPink’s entire output. It’s a lot.
And, brilliantly, with ‘New London Boy’, they’re also using the world of the physical format to release, not an indie-faced seven inch single, but an actual proper double CD single. Those of us who lived through the 1990s – a decade of new wave revival bands in Union Jack hoodies reeking of CK1 – remember the double CD single fondly. They were controversial things, because they were seen (rightly) as attempts to boost sales and chart positions by including different, sexy tracks across both compact discs: but for that same reason they were also brilliant.
In the 1990s it was possible to be an apparently straight-out guitar band like the Manic Street Preachers and also hire a remixer to make your thunderous rock anthem into a dance floor stomper.
David Quantick
One reason the double CD single option worked was that in the 1990s, especially, there was a massive crossover between dance music and rock music. Even leaving aside acts like New Order and Depeche Mode, who seemed to exist at a midpoint between dance and rock, it was now possible to be, say, an apparently straight-out guitar band like the Manic Street Preachers and also hire a remixer to make your thunderous rock anthem into a dance floor stomper. DJs and remixers like the Chemical Brothers and Fatboy Slim were routinely brought in to transform people’s songs from indie jangle or stadium grunge into something you might possibly hear in a club.
And this was extremely advantageous for the marketing departments of record labels. They could, and did, release a fairly traditional set of songs on one disc of a double CD offering – the single in its radio edit form plus a new song that had been left off the album, maybe a live track or a demo – and on the other CD, the one you had to buy to complete the set, there would be a series of remixes by Sabres of Paradise or Andy Weatherall (the latter being the man who, with Primal Scream’s ‘Loaded’, single-handedly transformed an average indie guitar band into the cool rulers of the student disco dance floor.
The Pet Shop Boys, while not rock (they released a song around this time called ‘How I Learned To Hate Rock ’n’ Roll’), were well-placed to take advantage of this new development. Take their 1996 single, ‘Before’: it’s a great song, a wistful number that went top ten in the UK. It came out at the height of the double CD boom, so as well as the lead track, you get the following: a new, and brilliant, song called ‘The Truck-Driver and His Mate’ which is a homo-erotic rock number (ha!): a fantastic ballad called ‘Hit And Miss’, which is also one of the best songs the Pet Shop Boys ever recorded, and ‘In The Night 1995’, a new version of an old song. And that’s not all: the second CD contains no less than five new mixes of ‘Before’, each one clocking in at seven minutes plus. It’s a great – and distinctly eclectic – collection of music, as well as a good way of making people buy the same lead track twice (but who cares when the quality and variety are that good? The BPI, apparently).
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InterviewSingles are strange things: in the 1960s it was considered bad form to take them off LPs, and bands like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones released entire albums with no singles on them. In the 70s, some acts wouldn’t even release singles, whereas the punk and post-punk eras loved singles as a way of getting music out quickly and directly.
And then there’s B-sides. B-sides are one of those things that some artists are very bad at – for a while there was a deranged push to release singles on floppy plastic flexi-discs with no B-side, while several idle acts were prone to putting instrumental versions of the a-side on the back of their hit – and some are very good at. Most music fans revel in the joy of flipping a 45 to find something insane on the B-side: an experiment, a less commercial song, a piece of madness. The Pet Shop Boys have always been good at tucking away little gems in this manner, from the astonishing ‘Paninaro’ (B-side of ‘Suburbia’) way back in 1986 to the very recent ‘If Jesus Had A Sister’ from 2024’s ‘Dancing Star‘ CD single.
Idle acts were prone to putting instrumental versions of the a-side on the back of their hit
David Quantick
Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe are pre-eminent among artists who understand the power of the single. Look at the sheer variety of the material they’ve released on those five singles this year. There are two songs written in the very earliest days of the Pet Shop Boys, ‘I’ve Got Plans (Involving You)’ and ‘It’s Not A Crime’. There’s a live cover of Bowie/Mott’s ‘All The Young Dudes’. There are new mixes and remixes. There are demos (a gorgeous early version of Nonetheless’ ‘A New Bohemia’). There are new songs (‘Party In The Blitz’, the aforementioned ‘If Jesus Had A Sister’). And everything, old and new, is bound together by the unique character of 21st century Pet Shops Boys and their brand of yearning, thunderous electronic nostalgia. At once looking back and looking forward, these 27 tracks are not just a fantastic addition to an already bulging catalogue of songs, they’re a testament to the continuing power and majesty of the single.
Both CDs of New London Boy, the final single from Nonetheless, is available now via Parlophone. The 2CD deluxe of Nonetheless is also available, with a further 13 non-album bonus tracks!
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Pet Shop Boys
New london boy - All the Young Dudes CD 1
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Pet Shop Boys
New london boy - All the Young Dudes CD 2
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Pet Shop Boys
Nonetheless expanded 2CD set
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Pet Shop Boys
Nonetheless expanded 3LP vinyl
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Tracklisting
New London boy / All the young dudes Pet Shop Boys /
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- New London boy (radio edit)
- All the young dudes
- Beauty has laid siege to the city
- All the young dudes (Delinquent mix)
- All the young dudes (Richard X longest mix)
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Tracklisting
New London boy / All the young dudes Pet Shop Boys /
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- All the young dudes (Richard X edit)
- New London Boy (Boy Harsher remix)
- Clean Air Hybrid Electric Bus
- All the young dudes (I. JORDAN remix)
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Tracklisting
Nonetheless Pet Shop Boys / Expanded Edition
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CD 1: Nonetheless
- Loneliness
- Feel
- Why am I dancing?
- New London boy
- Dancing star
- A new bohemia
- The schlager hit parade
- The secret of happiness
- Bullet for Narcissus
- Love is the law
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CD 2: Bonus
- All the young dudes
- Adrenaline
- The dark end of the street
- Miserere
- Loneliness (Demo version)
- Feel (Demo version)
- Why am I dancing? (Demo version)
- New London boy (Demo version)
- Dancing star (Demo version)
- A new bohemia (Demo version)
- The schlager hit parade (Demo version)
- The secret of happiness (Demo version)
- Bullet for Narcissus (Demo version)
- Love is the law (Demo version)
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CD 1: Nonetheless
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