Thirty-five years after Pet Shop Boys scored their first significant hit, they occupy a unique and pretty enviable place in the pop landscape. They’re the banger-crafting lovable uncles who keep their fingers on the musical pulse, while maintaining the mystique of performers from a different era. “Their detached and ambivalent approach to success is refreshing at a time where so many artists are clamouring for attention in digital spaces,” says Dr Kirsty Fairclough from the University of Salford’s School of Arts and Media.

But although Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe don’t post on social media (other than through carefully-curated official accounts), they remain an immediately recognisable pop partnership. Close your eyes and you can picture them standing side by side – they may or may not be wearing statement hats, but Lowe will definitely be in shades.

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At the same time, perhaps because we’re so used to seeing them described as “pop’s elder statesmen”, it’s easy to overlook their incredible chart record. Listed in The Guinness Book of Records as the most successful duo in UK music history, Tennant and Lowe have racked up a staggering 44 UK top-40 hits, including iconic and era-defining songs such as West End Girls, It’s a Sin, What Have I Done to Deserve This?, Left to My Own Devices and Go West. During their late 1980s and early ’90s imperial phase – to borrow a term coined by Tennant – they also sent 12 songs into the US Billboard Hot 100. They’ve been even more successful on the Billboard Dance Club Songs chart, where they’re the fifth most successful act ever behind Madonna, Janet Jackson, Rihanna and Beyoncé.