pet shop boys, in their own words

From their 1986 debut Please to 2016's forthcoming LP Super, Pet Shop Boys have defined the sound of British pop music for three decades. As the BBC look back on their 30 years together in a four part documentary, Neil Tennant & Chris Lowe pick some of their favourite songs from their first eleven studio albums.

Neil: "I still think it's one of the best songs we've ever written. This album was received by rock critics as a statement about Thatcherism, which quite interesting as it didn't occur to us when we were making it. When you looked it though – songs like Rent, Shopping... Kings Cross was meant to be a hymn to the people who were being left out."

Chris: “The concept for Introspective was just six, twelve inch mixes and if we were going to release them as a single we’d then edit them down. We worked with (legendary house music pioneer) Frankie Knuckles for the first time which was amazing and that was real highlight of making this record. It’s Alright is far closer to the original Sterling Void song and brings back happy memories of house music events around London."

Neil: "It’s quite a loved-up album…and this is the most romantic ballad the Pet Shop Boys have recorded by a long chalk. The Pet Shop Boys are famous for being ironic or a bit camp or something, but actually so many of our records are really heartfelt and this is a very heartfelt statement of how I felt about someone at the time.”

Neil: "In 2002 we decided we were going reinvent the Pet Shop Boys as a 'band’- I had bought two electric guitars and Chris - who doesn’t normally like guitars - encouraged me to play along with every track. So we make a surprisingly guitary album, and then we asked (The Smiths) Johnny Marr to come up and he plays on almost every track. ‘You Choose’ is the final track and is a very philosophical lyric – it was also the first time we did what we call “an Elton John Bernie Taupin” where I typed up the lyric, handed it to Chris and he set it to music."

Chris: "You get a different sound to records where they’re made and we wanted to make a record which had that LA class to it. For Hold On, Neil had the idea from a piece by Handel and I tool ages programming all the parts, but he didn’t expect me to programme the entire piece. I set the lyrics over a new melody to Handel’s chords which was no easy task, but I really like lyrics on this as it really captures lots of little elements of modern life."

Neil: "We weren't thinking ‘it’s a farewell album’… but when we left Parlophone, it was quite a good time because as soon as we left Parlophone, Parlophone left EMI.”

pet shop boys, documentary will be repeated on BBC 6 Music from Saturday July 9 to Tuesday July 12 at 0400.