(Credits: Far Out / Pet Shop Boys)
Wed 31 December 2025 16:15, UK
Band names are a funny thing we take for granted. The Beatles, Blue Öyster Cult, The Pet Shop Boys: what do any of those titles even mean?
It goes without saying that there is, of course, a story behind them all, admittedly with some being a bit more interesting and inspiring than others. There does seem to be a slight running theme, however, with band names ending in ‘boys’ – The Beach Boys and Beastie Boys are just two examples. The Pet Shop Boys are obviously no different.
The gendered aspect of it is easily explained by the fact that Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe were a duo of two young men when they first met and started making music back in 1981. Not exactly rocket science, is it? But what raises a few more questions is the Pet Shop moniker: were they taking the piss out of barbershop quartets, or did they just really like animals?
As it turns out, neither of those were the case, and the real explanation is much more mundane than you’d think. After the pair first met in a hi-fi shop in Chelsea and subsequently became friends, they looked around their surroundings to find similar tales of inspiration. As it so happened, two friends were working in a pet shop in Ealing and had been dubbed ‘The Pet Shop Boys’.
So, essentially, it was a case of theft where Tennant and Lowe then assumed the personae of their animal-loving friends, and subsequently never looked back. It might have been a kick in the teeth to the original pet shop pair, seeing how their futures as a double act could have mapped out, if only they had picked up an instrument.
How did The Pet Shop Boys get started?
However, The Pet Shop Boys wasn’t actually the first name that the band set on, as it was a long process before the cogs of the machine really began to spin in motion. Spending years honing their craft while holed up in a small studio in Camden Town, they recorded future hits like ‘Jealousy’ briefly under the name West End.
Of course, even though the title didn’t ultimately stick as a band name, it was something that evidently lingered in the minds of Tennant and Lowe as the years marched on, as they recorded ‘West End Girls’ over the preceding years of 1983 and 1984, along with a slew of other hits in the pipeline.
It took another few years for The Pet Shop Boys to firmly find their footing inside the musical world, but when they did so with ‘West End Girls’, it was the long-awaited gateway they needed in order to take the synth-pop world truly by storm.
Between London and then every continent across the globe, The Pet Shop Boys have an unparalleled reach, to this day, that has seen them rewarded with success like so few others. As the ‘West End Girls’ took to the stage, however, who could have realised that the story all began with two forgotten friends in a pet shop in Ealing.
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