Nightlife by Pet Shop Boys

Nightlife is the seventh studio album by English synth-pop duo Pet Shop Boys. It was released on 8 October 1999 by Parlophone. After the release and promotion of their previous album, Bilingual, 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. The album was a moderate commercial success, selling 1.2 million copies globally. It reached number seven on the UK Albums Chart (their first studio album not to reach the top five) and only spent three weeks in the chart at the time, but re-entered at number twenty-nine in 2017 following the album's Further Listening 1996–2000 reissue. It also became their lowest charting studio album in the US, reaching number 84. It received mixed-to-positive reviews from critics.