Nightlife (Pet Shop Boys album)

Nightlife
Studio album by
Released8 October 1999 (1999-10-08)
Recorded1996–1999
Studio
Genre
Length52:02
LabelParlophone
Producer
Pet Shop Boys chronology
Essential
(1998)
Nightlife
(1999)
Release
(2002)
Singles from Nightlife
  1. "I Don't Know What You Want but I Can't Give It Any More"
    Released: 19 July 1999
  2. "New York City Boy"
    Released: 22 September 1999
  3. "You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You're Drunk"
    Released: 3 January 2000
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic
Exclaim!Positive
NME4/10
Pitchfork3.2/10
Release Magazine8/10
Rolling Stone
Salon.comPositive
The Village VoiceA−

Nightlife is the seventh studio album by English synth-pop duo Pet Shop Boys, released on 8 October 1999 by Parlophone. After the release and promotion of their previous album, Bilingual (1996), Pet Shop Boys started work with playwright Jonathan Harvey on the stage musical that eventually became Closer to Heaven (at one stage during the writing process, the musical was given the name of Nightlife). Pet Shop Boys soon had an album's worth of tracks and decided to release the album Nightlife as a concept album and in order to showcase some of the songs that would eventually make it into the musical.

The album incorporates a variety of musical influences, including hard trance on the Rollo-produced "For Your Own Good" and "Radiophonic"; dance-pop on "Closer to Heaven" and "I Don't Know What You Want but I Can't Give It Any More"; disco pastiche on "New York City Boy"; and country music on "You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You're Drunk". The track "Happiness Is an Option" is based on Sergei Rachmaninoff's classical piece Vocalise, Op. 34, No. 14.

As of May 2001, the album had sold 1.2 million copies worldwide. It reached number seven on the UK Albums Chart (their first studio album not to reach the top five) and spent three weeks on the chart at the time, but re-entered at number 29 in 2017 following the album's Further Listening 1996–2000 reissue. It also became the duo's lowest-charting studio album in the United States, reaching number 84 on the Billboard 200.