Pet Shop Boy's fundamental point
Author: Jonty Skrufff
Thursday, May 18, 2006
Neil Tennant from the Pet Shop Boys chatted to Skrufff this week about the duo’s upcoming artist album Fundamental and revealed that they deliberately chose the title to provoke discussion about religious fundamentalism.
“We chose Fundamental specifically it because it’s a dangerous and provocative word and we’ve put it on the album cover in a showbiz context, in lights,” said Neil.
“I think it’s good and more effective to deal with serious politics in a light way, it’s more powerful. I think laughing at politicians is a good way of neutering them slightly,” he suggested.
Conceding that speaking out directly about politics has recently enraged some of their fans, Neil told Skrufff he plans to continue making waves, with ID cards and the loss of civil liberties the issues he cares about the most.
“Our fans have been complaining that ‘the Pet Shop Boys have gone political’, because of course we’ve always slagged off groups for being political. But what I don’t like is people being self-righteously political in a way that gets them lots of publicity, not mentioning any names,” he said.
“To me what matters in particular is the issue of ID cards and personal freedom, specifically personal freedom being curbed by the supposed war on terror and by fundamentalism and by people taking religion too seriously,” he continued.
“To me these are not political issues. You could be against all of those and be a Marxist or equally in David Cameron’s shadow cabinet. They are non-political issues, they are the framework of our lives upon which we build politics,’ he said.
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