Or why I still worship the Pet Shop Boys:
Stereogum: Hello boys. Where are you?
Neil: We are in London.
Stereogum: Are you doing a ton of press for the new record?
Chris: Not if we can help it.
Neil: You are the first one, actually … and possibly the last.
Chris: We’ll see how this goes and then decide whether or not to move forward with publicity for this album.
They also capture the core thing I admire about my favorite working artists, writers, singers, actors, et al. They do it for no other reason than they love it:
Neil: If we had run out of musical ideas ten years ago or something, I can assure you that we would NOT now be touring as some kind of 80′s revival act. We’d simply just be doing something else with our lives. We would have moved on. Really, the making of new music is what fuels and re-fuels an interest in the old songs … and being able to see the through-line of continuity within all the work and how both the new material and the old somehow tie together. We’ve always just really loved the process of writing songs and recording albums and then choosing remixers to work on the songs — we love all that stuff. Our love for that has never dimmed, it has never felt like chore. I can assure you that if it had ever felt like a chore, we are lazy enough to have given it up. We both still have the constant impetus to go into a studio and make songs.
Sometimes I wake up in the morning and Chris has sent over three or four demos that he’s made the night before at home in his studio … It remains one of the constants in both of our lives. We do it for pleasure, really. That’s how we started … we started making music together as a hobby and it just kind of took off from there. It never ceased to have that playful element … and I think it’s really important to stay connected to that childish, playful element to making music. Some people cut themselves off from that when they become a “grown up”… and when you do that, you generally cut yourself off from your own creativity.
Chris: We’re also still enormous music fans as well. We follow everything happening in popular music and are constantly being asked about it. People want to know what we think of the new Daft Punk single. It’s an issue for us. (laughs)
Neil: Oh, more than an issue. I mean, is there anything more important right now than that that Daft Punk single?!
The Dish 