[31][32] In April, Tennant left Smash Hits magazine—where he had progressed to the position of deputy editor—and in July, a new single, "Opportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money)", was released, reaching number 116 in the UK.

It subsequently replicated this success in the United States, Canada, Finland, Hong Kong, Ireland, Israel, New Zealand and Norway and sold an estimated 1.5 million copies worldwide.

Pet Shop Boys had been told that Springfield was difficult to work with and even that she could no longer sing;[45][43] however, her performance on the track put any such concerns to rest and they began a collaboration with her, which lasted until the end of the decade.

Pet Shop Boys had selected the song for an appearance on Love Me Tender, an ITV programme commemorating the tenth anniversary of Elvis Presley's death, and decided to release it.

[60] In March 1991, a cover of U2's "Where the Streets Have No Name" as a medley with "Can't Take My Eyes Off You", the 1960s pop song by Frankie Valli/the Four Seasons, was released as a double-A-sided single with a remix of the album track "How Can You Expect to Be Taken Seriously?"

[8] The theme was continued with the follow-up single, a cover of the Village People song "Go West", which reached number two in the UK, with another computer-generated music video, this time inspired by the Soviet Union, with shots of the duo filmed in Moscow.

[52] It was produced by Pet Shop Boys and mixed with additional production by Stephen Hague, who had worked with them on their first album and had subsequently made records with OMD, New Order and Erasure.

Then, in October, Pet Shop Boys began their Discovery tour, visiting areas that they had never performed in before: Singapore, Australia, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Colombia, Chile, Argentina and Brazil.

The album included Pet Shop Boys' version of "Sail Away", along with songs performed by Elton John, Texas, Marianne Faithfull, The Divine Comedy, Suede, Damon Albarn, Vic Reeves and Robbie Williams.

The first single, "Home and Dry", featured a very peculiar music video, directed by Wolfgang Tillmans, mostly consisting of raw camcorder footage of mice filmed in the London Underground.

[96] They used two extra guitarists, Bic Hayes and Mark Refoy, percussionist Dawne Adams, and regular programmer Pete Gleadall, alongside Lowe on keyboards and Tennant on guitar and vocals.

[103] In September 2004, Pet Shop Boys appeared at a free concert in Trafalgar Square in London, where they performed, with the Dresdner Sinfoniker orchestra, a whole new soundtrack to accompany the seminal 1925 silent film Battleship Potemkin.

The week that Fundamental was released, a documentary, titled Pet Shop Boys: A Life in Pop, was broadcast on Channel 4, directed by George Scott and produced by Nick de Grunwald.

[113] On 10 October 2006, Pet Shop Boys embarked on the North and Central American leg of their world tour, which took them through Canada, the United States and Mexico, concluding on 16 November.

[128] Pet Shop Boys continued their world tour, albeit with a slightly different production and set list, on 14 March 2007, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, then played concerts in Argentina, Chile, New Zealand and Australia (as co-headliners of the V Festival 2007), Norway, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Germany, Switzerland, France, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Denmark, Ireland, Sweden, Italy, Spain, Belgium and Singapore.

[145][146] Pet Shop Boys composed a ballet, The Most Incredible Thing, based on a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen, which opened at Sadlers Wells in London on 17 March 2011.

It featured former Royal Ballet star Ivan Putrov, animated films created by Tal Rosner,[148] and orchestrations by German composer Sven Helbig, who worked with the band in 2005 as a co-producer for Battleship Potemkin.

[155][156] At the 2012 Summer Olympics closing ceremony on 12 August, Tennant and Lowe rode around the stadium in cycle-driven chariots, wearing pointy hats as they performed "West End Girls" to a global audience.

The release coincided with the Electric Tour that included Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil, Colombia, Asia—with dates in the Philippines, Indonesia, and China for the first time—Lebanon, Israel, Turkey, Europe and North America.

[98][161][162][163] On 23 July, Pet Shop Boys appeared at the BBC Proms to premiere A Man from the Future, a piece written for orchestra, choir, electronics, and narrator, based on the life of Alan Turing.

The corresponding Dreamworld tour was planned to start mid-2020, but was postponed twice due to the COVID-19 pandemic; it finally got underway in May 2022 and included their third appearance at the Glastonbury festival, this time closing the Other Stage on the Sunday night.

[181] The Dreamworld tour wrapped up in 2024, with a five-night residency at the Royal Opera House in July,[182] followed by a gig at Funny Girls in Blackpool and a headline appearance at the final night of Radio 2 in the Park in Preston in September.

In November, Pet Shop Boys played "All the Young Dudes" in a medley with "West End Girls", accompanied by the Manchester Camerata, at the 2024 MTV Europe Music Awards, where the duo were honoured as Pop Pioneers.

[189] In 2020, BBC journalist Nick Levine noted that Pet Shop Boys still maintain a somewhat "detached and ambivalent approach" to their success, which also shows in their low profile on social media.

Tennant has referenced the designers of his suits in certain interviews[citation needed] and Lowe has often sported outfits and glasses made by Issey Miyake,[199][200] Stüssy, and Yohji Yamamoto's Y-3 for Adidas.

This was demonstrated through mailing list discussions from 1998 onwards, in which fans voiced concern over the "most commercially promising selection and marketing of singles" for the then-upcoming Nightlife, and debated the quality of the then-recent Bilingual, spurred by the album's poorer performance in sales.

Most posters, Maus summarised, feared that the band's appeal would become essentially limited to a cult following; "dissent, along the lines that the fans would always have the Pet Shop Boys, no matter what happened commercially, was scarce and ineffectual".

[190] Lynn Barber, writing for the London Observer on 1 July 1997 stated that "The genius of the Pet Shop Boys was to combine these polar opposites: Neil's wistful introspective lyrics and Chris's mindless, cheerful, upbeat rhythms.

In the liner notes to their 1991 greatest hits album, Discography, the band states that: "When we wrote this song ("Heart") we wanted to submit it to Madonna but didn't dare risk disappointment."

[221] Tennant wrote a trio of songs about his best friend from Newcastle, Christopher Dowell, who died from the disease in 1989:[220] "It Couldn't Happen Here" alludes to their early complacency,[222] "Being Boring" is an elegy to their friendship,[223] and "Your Funny Uncle" describes his funeral.