Artists – the Pet Shop Boys,
don’t get me wrong here about nominating them, I know there’s much love on the forum for the synthpop twosome, so this is different from me selecting an artist or band who I have reason to
dislike.
I enjoyed a lot of their singles in the 80’s and 90’s, and always admired the tasteful artwork adorning their albums, but maybe its first impressions that still grip me, as they didn’t get off to a great start for me when they popped up with the annoyingly catchy (but admittedly very good pop)
West End Girls single. I turned up my nose, exclaiming ‘just who were these Johnny come lately contenders, grabbing the limelight and stealing the musical throne left vacant by the demise of the great Soft Cell’.
But later on I’d happily hum along to
What Have I Done To Deserve This?, and
Always On My Mind, and there was a period during the time of ‘Introspective’ when I shared a flat with a friend who was a big fan, he’d affectionately refer to them as the Pets, and I’d have to live through the horror of the shared household as he played their music loudly from inside the bathroom where he loved to lay soaking in a bath for hours,
Left To My Own Devices took on a whole new meaning then.
Their cover version of
Go West was such good fun, and, expecting more of the same kind of Anthemic bonkers OTT’ness to be in abundance I finally succumbed and went out and bought ‘Very’, my one and only Pet Shop Boys purchase. But I couldn’t get into it, and before the week was out I’d returned the CD to the store.
The Pets and I were no more, it was a brief fling, I think it was just a phase I was going through...
