Last Friday night, Stuart and I went to see the Pet Shop Boys perform their Obscure show. OMG.
B-sides, album tracks and fan favourites. They played some of my favourite ever Pet Shop Boys tracks; To Face the Truth, King’s Cross, The Way It Used to Be, Your Funny Uncle, Later Tonight (to name but a few). I was in Heaven.
The crowd sang every word to every song.
It was a fabulous show. But also a meaningful one.
The Obscure shows aren’t meant to be judged by the same criteria as a standard Pet Shop Boys concert. They’re the deliberate antithesis of the long‑running Dreamworld tour, which has been delivering the hits, brilliantly around the world since 2022.
Obscure is something else entirely: a curated deep‑dive for the people who’ve lived with these songs for decades.
For many of us, these tracks aren’t “obscure” at all. They’re the soundtrack to very specific moments in our lives. We remember exactly where we were when we first heard them. Who we were with. How we felt. We fell in love to these songs in our bedrooms, listening on cheap hi‑fis and cassettes made by people we cared about, some of whom aren’t here anymore. We revised for exams to them. We listened to them on Walkmans at bus stops in the rain. We listened at funerals to them, we danced at weddings to them, skipped to the pub humming them and skipped home singing them even louder.
These songs taught us about running away, about revolution, about dignity, about being yourself with a bit of class.
So when the Boys choose to build a show around this part of their catalogue, it isn’t a downgrade... it’s a gift. It’s a chance to hear the emotional architecture of their career performed with intention, in a venue small enough to feel personal.
If anything, the only “obscure” thing is the idea that a band with a forty‑year legacy should only be measured by how loudly a crowd reacts to their biggest singles.
For the fans who’ve carried these songs through every chapter of their lives, Obscure made perfect sense.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
PSB Setlist (Friday - each day was a little different)
We're the Pet Shop Boys
Positive Role Model
Will‐o‐the‐wisp
After the Event
Two Divided by Zero
Jack the Lad
To Face the Truth
Hit and Miss
Bet She's Not Your Girlfriend
One in Million / Mr. Vain
Happiness Is an Option
Sexy Northerner
In His Imagination
It Couldn't Happen Here
Miserablism
King of Rome
King's Cross
Love Is the Law
Why Don't We Live Together?
Requiem in Denim and Leopardskin
Encore:
Your Funny Uncle
The Way It Used to Be
Later Tonight
I Dream of a Better Tomorrow
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