Wiki
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Release Date
7 July 1996
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Length
12 tracks
Bilingual is the tenth album (sixth containing all original material) by the English electronic duo Pet Shop Boys, released in 1996. The album has sold about 1,000,000 copies worldwide.
Bilingual continues the heavily instrumented arrangements and backing vocals Pet Shop Boys began adding to their music with the album Very. As suggested by the title, the songs on the album have worldwide influences, particularly from Latin America. After the release of their Very album, Pet Shop Boys toured South America and were influenced by the beats and rhythms associated with Latin American music. Three of the songs have bilingual lyrics, mixing the English language with Spanish and Portuguese.
In late 1995, the band ended their contract with the American branch of EMI and signed with Atlantic Records. A renewed marketing campaign was launched to promote the band in the US via both radio airplay and club play.
The singles released from the album were all successful, with three of them—"Before", "Se a vida é (That's the Way Life Is)" and "A Red Letter Day"—reaching the UK Top 10. A fourth, the English/Spanish language composition "Single-Bilingual", peaked within the Top 20.
The single "Se a vida é (That's the Way Life Is)" peaked at number eight in the UK charts in late August 1996, having already gained a great deal of radio airplay, and secured the band their first appearance on UK music show Top of the Pops in three years. The song soon became the summer party anthem of the year for those people who were not advocates of the UK's ever-growing club culture of the late 1980s and the 1990s, helped by its Portuguese/Brazilian feel, Latino influences and a popular video shot by Bruce Weber set mainly in a water park located in south Florida. "Se a vida é" would spend eight weeks in the Top 40 before dropping out in early November. Numerous dance remixes were also made which helped the track become one of the biggest club hits of the second half of the 1990s. It was eventually released in the US in April 1997 as a double A-side single with "To Step Aside". To promote the package, thirteen mixes of "To Step Aside" were commissioned, most of them released promotionally only.
Earlier in 1996, prior to the album's release, Tennant's vocals were featured on two live recordings by the British group Suede, which were released as B-sides to their single "Filmstar". One track was a cover of the Pet Shop Boys track "Rent" while the second was a duet with Suede singer Brett Anderson on the Suede song "Saturday Night". In addition, the Pet Shop Boys collaborated with David Bowie on the song "Hallo Spaceboy", which reached No. 15 in the UK Singles Chart in February 1996. In late 1996 The song "Up Against It" became a radio hit in Sweden and some other countries but never had a release as a CD single.
Bilingual was recorded at Bunk Junk & Genius, Sarm West and Sarm Hook End, Axis (New York), Bass Hit (New York) and the State House of Broadcasting and Sound Recording (Moscow).
In 1997, Pet Shop Boys decided to perform a series of concerts at the Savoy Theatre in London. To promote the concerts they released a cover version of "Somewhere" from West Side Story and called the concerts "Pet Shop Boys Somewhere". The single reached the UK top 10 and Bilingual was re-released in a "Special Edition", including the new single and a bonus CD of remixes and B-sides.
In 2001, Pet Shop Boys re-issued their first six studio albums; Bilingual was re-released as Bilingual/Further Listening 1995–1997. The re-released version was not only digitally remastered but came with a second disc of B-sides and previously unreleased material from around the time of the album's original release.
Yet another re-release followed on 9 February 2009, under the title of Bilingual: Remastered. This version contains only the 12 tracks on the original.
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