Pet Shop Boys Announce ‘Super’ Album, Release New Track “Inner Sanctum”: Listen
All those “Super” teases over the past week did indeed turn out to be for the upcoming 13th studio album by Pet Shop Boys, it was revealed today (January 21). Super, produced by Stuart Price, will be released on April 1, and will include a single called “The Pop Kids” and buzz track “Inner Sanctum,” which is available to stream now on Spotify and download from iTunes.
You can also hear the brief vocal bit of the mostly-instrumental dance cut “Inner Sanctum” in the below teaser video for the album.In an interview with Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe conducted by the duo’s publicist Murray Chalmers and posted on the What Is Super site, the two discuss writing Super in Berlin and recording it in Los Angeles with Stuart Price. “I was walking to the studio one day and I kept imagining Germans saying ‘super’, because they say ‘super’ in a certain way — ‘SUPER, JA!’ — and they say super a lot,” Lowe says in the interview, while discussing the album title. “And I just thought, ‘Oh, super!’ Because we’d been through a few titles, hadn’t we?”
While the pair began writing the bulk of the album in 2014, Lowe reveals that he began working on the music for single “The Pop Kids” while they were on tour with Take That in 2011.
“After the shows I quite often don’t want a drink or even to go to the hotel bar — so rather than go to the hotel bar for one last drink I would switch the gear on and have a little go at writing some songs, without any thought of what they would be used for,” Lowe says. “But as I was doing this one, I did think it was rather good — so when we started writing for the album in Berlin I dug it up.”
Tennant explains that, lyrically, “The Pop Kids” is “about a friend of mine who moved from Birmingham to go to Kings College in London to study History and he made friends with a girl there. They both loved pop music and they used to go clubbing all the time and because of that they were known as the pop kids.”
Twelve songs total make up the album, which will be released in digital, CD and vinyl form. Pet Shop Boys will also stage a four-night residency at London’s Royal Opera House from July 20 through 23.
PET SHOP BOYS, SUPER
1. Happiness 2. The Pop Kids 3. Twenty-something 4. Groovy 5. The dictator decides 6. Pazzo! 7. Inner sanctum 8. Undertow 9. Sad robot world 10. Say it to me 11. Burn 12. Into thin air
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