The best from each decade (and that’s hard!)

The Pet Shop Boys release their complete singles collection, “Smash”, today, looking back on nearly 40 years of big ones, number ones, global hits and more. So here are our thoughts and memories from each of their five decades in music and the song that defines that particular era. There can only be one. Which are yours…?

1980’s – “Opportunities (Lets Make Lots Of Money)” (1986)

This is a tough one. For most of their followers, the 80’s were PSB and PSB were the sound of the 80’s. Whilst “It’s A Sin” and “West End Girls” standout from the crowd, as do “Domino Dancing” and “Always On My Mind” of course, it’s “Opportunities (Lets Make Lots Of Money)” that really sums up the decade as Chris and Neil had their opportunity while anyone alive in the 80’s made it their business to make as much money as they could. The soundtrack to Thatcher’s Britain had its hymn with “Opportunities (Lets Make Lots Of Money)”. So who has the brains and whose got the looks??(!)

1990’s – “Can You Forgive Her?” (1993)

Again, this one is ‘so hard'(!) With so many to choose from like “Being Boring” to “Se a Vida é”, “Go West” and “New York City Boy”, the 90’s were more experimentalist for the ‘Boys’, but it is the lead single from their “Very” album, “Can You Forgive Her?”, that really packed a punch in 1993 and kicked off a stream of hits from their first number one album. The song has many different rooms to take you in from verse to the build up, the chorus and the anti-chorus, this is Chris and Neil at their most inventive yet and it made sure they were still out in front eight years on from their debut.

2000’s – “Love Etc.” (2009)

The 2000’s became even more inventive for the Pet Shop Boys with novel tracks like “Home And Dry”, “Flamboyant”, “I’m With Stupid” and “Numb”, the albums “Release”, “PopArt” and “Fundamental”, but it is 2009’s “Love Etc.” that really steals the show this decade. An addictive, short-lived track – the video is pretty cool too – that just grabs your attention from the first note and leaves you wanting more and more. And isn’t that what great pop music is all about? Yes! You need more, You need more, You need more, You need…

2010’s – “Axis” (2013)

Chris and Neil really took on the business in the 2010’s with two back to back albums “Elysium” and “Electric”, taking back to the clubs again just as they had done in the 80’s with tracks like “In The Night”. It’s the lead single from “Electric”, “Axis”, that wins the day in the 2010’s, although who could forget “Together”, “The Pop Kids” and the team up with Years & Years, “Dreamland”. “Axis” remains PSB and it’s roots are very firmly buried in the 80’s but it’s a 2013 reboot of applied science with a new sound.

2020’s – “Monkey Business” (2020)

With only three years of the 2020’s gone so far, the line up is very small to pick one. It could have been “Cricket Wife” or their collaboration with Soft Cell, “Purple Zone”, or even the “Lost” EP of previously unreleased songs from the “Super” era. But it’s the “Hotspot” single “Money Business”, title and all, that so far edges itself out of the contenders. Performed at their recent “Dreamworld: Greatest Hits” tour, the track is a standout and another of those quirky writes from the Boys, comfortable in their own skins after 35 years of doing it their way.

Which would your best song of each decade be? “Smash” brings together all of Chris and Neil’s UK and globals hits together in what is their fourth look back on their career. “Discography” did it in 1991, “PopArt” in 2003 and “Ultimate” in 2010. With a new album in production, their fifteenth, now is as good a time as any to reflect on all that has gone before. All our yesterdays and all our lives. Smash!

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