Chris Lowe

Christopher Sean Lowe (born 4 October 1959) is an English musician and songwriter who formed the synth-pop duo Pet Shop Boys with Neil Tennant. He is primarily the keyboardist and occasionally a vocalist, and he is the co-author of the catalogue of Pet Shop Boys songs. Lowe is known for his impassive stage persona, standing still behind a keyboard, wearing a hat and dark glasses.

Growing up in a musical environment in Blackpool with a grandfather who was a professional trombonist, Lowe learned trombone and piano and performed in several orchestras and bands in his youth. At dance clubs in the late 1970s, his taste in music became focused on disco. In 1981, he met Tennant while working in London, and the pair began writing songs together, influenced by Lowe's passion for electronic dance music. Lowe planned to become an architect, and he earned a BA and a BArch at the University of Liverpool before quitting the course to embark on a music career in 1985.

Lowe's ear for music trends has been a factor in the duo's success. Pet Shop Boys had 31 top-10 entries on Billboard magazine's Dance Club Songs chart—the most of any duo or group —and they are the most successful duo in UK music history, with 44 top 40 hits. As a member of Pet Shop Boys, Lowe has been recognised for his outstanding contribution to music by both the Ivor Novello Awards and the Brit Awards.

Early life and education Christopher Sean Lowe was born and raised in Blackpool, Lancashire. His grandfather, Syd Flood, was a trombonist and a member of the comedy jazz troupe The Nitwits. His mother was a dancer, and his father—a sales representative for the gas board—could play piano by ear. Lowe learned to play trombone and piano as a child. He attended Thames Primary School and went on to Arnold School, where he played in the school orchestra and dance band and studied music as an A-level subject.

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", and he joined the Musicians' Union with them. Entering his teenage years, he preferred listening to artists his grandparents enjoyed, like Dorothy Squires, Frank Sinatra, and Tom Jones, rather than the music that was popular with his peers at the time. He had developed an interest in the subject as a child, designing imaginary houses during his family's frequent moves. He played trombone in the university orchestra for a term but did not enjoy it. In 1981, he completed the first part of his course and received a Bachelor of Arts with Honours. During a work placement that year at Michael Aukett Associates architectural practice in London, he designed a staircase for an industrial estate in Milton Keynes. It was at this time that he met Neil Tennant in Chelsea Record Centre, a hi-fi shop on King's Road in London. 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.

Musical career Pet Shop Boys

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. Lowe had musical training and fluency, while Tennant was largely self-taught and had been writing his own songs for a decade. 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".

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.

Over the years, Lowe kept up with music trends at clubs in the UK as well as places like Ibiza and Berlin. Lowe described his continuing sources of inspiration in a 2013 interview with Stereogum:

Lowe was also the motivating force behind two of Pet Shop Boys' more downbeat albums — the guitar-driven Release (2002) and the moody Elysium (2012). He has a knack for selecting cover versions, according to Tennant, including the Elvis Presley tribute "Always on My Mind" (1987) and the Village People anthem "Go West" (1993).

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). According to programmer Pete Gleadall: "People often don't realise Chris' input to the whole process. He basically writes the bulk of the backing to most of the songs, and quite often the melody lines as well, which Neil embellishes and develops". 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. 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.

Instruments and equipment Keyboard setups Since starting out with Tennant's Korg MS-10, Lowe has used other models of the brand, including the Korg M1 and the Korg Triton. Early on, Pet Shop Boys made use of samples from an Emulator. Lowe used a Fairlight CMI to compose songs through the early 1990s. In the 2020s, he has used a similar setup of a laptop and keyboard for composing songs. He used a Roland JD-800 on the 2002 Release Tour, a stripped-down production where he played live keyboards more than usual. He told The Washington Post: I find it a lot more rewarding. Before, I could never actually rationalize the point of playing anything live because I could always put it in the computer and the computer could play it better. But this time I'm playing a lot of piano, which is really enjoyable, and I'm getting a lot more out of it. On Dreamworld: The Greatest Hits Live (2022–25), Pet Shop Boys' long-time FOH engineer Holger Schwark explained:

A monitor on Lowe's keyboard setup displays a musical score, lyrics, and cues. His vocals are often spoken rather than sung, sometimes in the form of a list, such as reciting days of the week on "Thursday". When he does sing, as on "This Used to Be the Future" (2009), he prefers to have his voice treated with pitch correction software like Melodyne. He has stated that he dislikes the sound of his voice.

Other instruments Lowe played trombone on the song "I Want a Lover" on the first Pet Shop Boys album, Please (1986), and he appeared with his trombone in the video for the song "What Have I Done to Deserve This?" in 1987. The song "Later Tonight" from Please was recorded live in the studio with Lowe on piano. He played "It's a Sin" on the Wurlitzer organ in the Blackpool Tower Ballroom for the 2006 documentary Pet Shop Boys: A Life in Pop.

Solo appearances In 1993, Lowe wrote and produced the track "Do the Right Thing" for footballer Ian Wright, who played for Lowe's favourite team, Arsenal. The song featured backing vocals by long-time Pet Shop Boys backing singer Sylvia Mason-James, and the single featured remixes by Rollo.

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.

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.

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

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.

Public image 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. 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."

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."