Chris Lowe

Christopher Sean Lowe (born 4 October 1959)^[1] is an English musician, songwriter, and co-founder of the synth-pop duo Pet Shop Boys, which he formed with Neil Tennant in 1981.^[2] He is primarily the keyboardist and occasionally a vocalist, and he is the co-author of the catalogue of Pet Shop Boys songs with his writing partner, Tennant. Lowe is known for his impassive stage persona, standing still behind a keyboard with his head and eyes covered.

Christopher Sean Lowe was born and raised in Blackpool, Lancashire,^[1] and attended Arnold School.^[3] His grandfather, Syd Flood, was a trombonist and a member of the comedy jazz troupe The Nitwits.^[4] His mother was a dancer, and his father, a sales representative,^[2] could play piano by ear.^[5] Lowe learned trombone and piano and was in the school orchestra and dance band.^[6] He studied music as an A-level subject.^[7]

Lowe played trombone in a semi-professional seven-piece dance band named One Under the Eight that performed favourites like "Hello Dolly", "La Bamba" and "Moon River",^[8] and he joined the Musicians' Union with them.^[6] He was also in a local brass band, the Norman Memorial Youth Band,^[6] and briefly played keyboards with a school rock band called Stallion.^[9]

Lowe began studying architecture at the University of Liverpool in 1978^[10] and received a Bachelor of Arts with Honours in 1981.^[11] During a work placement in 1981 at Michael Aukett Associates architectural practice in London, he designed a staircase for an industrial estate in Milton Keynes.^[12] It was at this time that he met Neil Tennant in Chelsea Record Centre, a hi-fi shop on King's Road in London.^[10] As their music career developed, Lowe continued his architecture course and earned a Bachelor of Architecture, but did not complete the final work requirement to qualify as an architect before he and Tennant committed full time to the Pet Shop Boys in 1985.^[13][14][15]

Lowe generally performs as the Pet Shop Boys' keyboardist. He sometimes provides spoken-word or sung backing vocals and has taken the lead on a few songs, including "Paninaro", for which he also wrote the lyrics.^[16] Lowe played trombone on the song "I Want a Lover" (1986),^[a] and he appeared with his trombone in the video for the song "What Have I Done to Deserve This?" (1987).^[17]

Lowe and Tennant began writing music together shortly after their first meeting in August 1981. During their early sessions, Lowe played a Korg MS-10 monophonic synthesizer belonging to Tennant.^[18][19] Lowe had musical training and fluency, while Tennant was largely self-taught and had been writing his own songs for a decade.^[20] In 1982, Lowe wrote a piece of music on the piano at his family home in Blackpool and gave a cassette recording to Tennant to write lyrics. The song, "Jealousy", was later released on their fourth studio album, Behaviour (1990). Lowe called it "probably the first time I'd ever constructed a song".^[21]

Lowe has strong views about his taste in music, as he expressed in a 1986 interview with Entertainment Tonight:

I don't like country and western. I don't like rock music... I don't like rockabilly or rock and roll particularly. I don't like much really, do I? But what I do like, I love passionately.^[2]

Lowe's affinity for dance music influenced the direction of the duo's songwriting.^[18] Growing up in Blackpool, he observed, "Being in a musical environment with lots of people who were having fun to pop music... that made an impression".^[2] In London, he discovered new music being played in underground and gay clubs; his reaction at the time was, "Everything I've heard before is redundant now, this is all I like".^[22] A particular favourite of his was "Passion" by The Flirts, written and produced by Bobby Orlando in 1982. The following year, Pet Shop Boys started working with Orlando on some of their songs, including an early version of "West End Girls".^[23]

Over the years, Lowe kept up with music trends at clubs in the UK as well as places like Ibiza and Berlin.^[19] Steve Harnell, editor of Classic Pop magazine, credited Lowe for "the way that he's kept the duo's music sounding fresh and relevant to a new generation of fans".^[24] Lowe described his continuing sources of inspiration in a 2013 interview with Stereogum:

I'm always very inspired by sounds. Whether it be Brazilian music or the Spanglish radio stations in LA — or even hearing dubstep for the first time — I'm always intrigued by interesting new sounds and they way they filter through popular music … or by how different cultures do their own take on what is "dance" music or "electronic" music.^[25]

Producer Julian Mendelsohn noticed Lowe's ability to compose keyboard lines in a matter of minutes during the recording of Pet Shop Boys' second album Actually (1987).^[26] The duo's songwriting process involves working on songs together as well as coming up with their parts separately and sharing them with each other, particularly since the COVID-19 lockdown.^[25][27] In a 2024 interview with La Nación, Lowe remarked that he enjoys figuring out the right music for Tennant's lyrics, calling it an exercise in finding the chords and sounds that best match the melody.^[28]

In 1993, he wrote and produced the track "Do the Right Thing" for Arsenal footballer Ian Wright.^[29] The song featured backing vocals by long-time Pet Shop Boys backing singer Sylvia Mason-James, and the single featured remixes by Rollo.^[30]

Two years later, Lowe had a cameo in the Australian soap opera Neighbours. His appearance was filmed while Pet Shop Boys were touring Australia in 1994.^[31][32]

In 2004, he was commissioned to do music for an advertisement for the sunscreen brand Blockhead. The song ended up in a remixed version on a "Café Mambo" compilation.^[33]

Lowe wrote the music for the song "Streets of Berlin", featured in the 2006 revival of Bent at the Trafalgar Studios in Whitehall.^[34][35]

In 2011, Lowe appeared as featured vocalist on Stop Modernists' cover version of the New Order song "Subculture". It was the first time he had appeared as a vocalist on a non-Pet Shop Boys project.^[36][37]

Lowe adopts an understated public presence, often wearing sportswear and with his eyes hidden behind sunglasses, and usually wearing headwear of some sort (a baseball cap inscribed with the word "BOY" being his most iconic) – although in the duo's early years his face was shown fully unobscured. In Pet Shop Boys videos and photoshoots, he is often seen as a spectator standing slightly behind Tennant. For the duo's 1988 musical film It Couldn't Happen Here, he spoke very little dialogue compared to Tennant. In live performances he rarely interacts with the audience and often stands still while playing keyboards.^[38] In 1995, The Guardian wrote that he was "possibly more famous for not doing anything than almost anyone else in the history of popular entertainment."^[39]

A Guardian profile of the group from 1993 noted that Lowe's image of "silent Chris walking two steps behind singing Neil" was an intentional choice, developed in discussion with photographer and music video director Eric Watson; Watson has said that "Chris didn't want to be seen playing keyboards or anything. We realised there was something about somebody singing and somebody else doing nothing – just looking, then looking away – that adds a hideous tension."^[40][41]

• Official Pet Shop Boys site
• Chris Lowe discography at Discogs
• Chris Lowe at IMDb