Neil Tennant revisits songs he’s written since the age of nine

Neil Tennant revisits songs he’s written since the age of nine

Author: Mark Ellen, David Hepworth and Alex Gold March 20, 2026 Duration: 54:35

Neil Tennant co-wrote a musical at Primary School and soon decided that “learning other people’s songs was hard work compared with making up your own”. He’s chosen some from the Pet Shop Boys’ 40-year catalogue, hits and obscurities, in ‘One Hundred Lyrics and a Poem’, just out in paperback, and added fascinating notes about their context and composition. This very funny and revealing conversation lands on the following …

 

... the first song he ever wrote

 

… auditioning for Rocket Records in 1975

 

… does songwriting have rules?

 

 … how Chris Lowe tamed his inner “musical snob”

 

… rap, Brecht-Weill, Betjeman, Noel Coward, My Fair Lady and the art of “speak-singing”

 

… the decades of lyrics stored in our brains

 

… the Songwriting Bootcamp that produced What Have I Done To Deserve This?

 

… the essence of melancholy (and the chord that expresses it)

 

… “the sound of words is often more important than the sense”

 

… whether Dylan deserved the Nobel Prize for Literature

 

… West End Girls and whether to rap in English or American

 

… the writing of King's Cross, Cricket Wife, Odd Man Out and I Made My Excuses And Left

 

… “Robert Maxwell stole my pension!”

 

… and the “geology of my life” in diaries that one day might make a memoir.

 

Order ‘One Hundred Lyrics And a Poem’ here: https://www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571397891-one-hundred-lyrics-and-a-poem/

 

And ‘Pet Shop Boys: Volume’ here: https://shop.petshopboys.co.uk/gb/pet-shop-boys-volume/9780500027479.html


Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

Help us to keep The Longest Continuous Conversation In Rock'n'Roll going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.


There’s a particular kind of conversation about music that happens between friends who’ve spent a lifetime immersed in it-not as distant critics, but as participants in the culture. That’s the atmosphere you’ll find in Word In Your Ear, a podcast from Mark Ellen, David Hepworth, and Alex Gold. With a collective eighty years of writing and broadcasting for titles like Smash Hits and Mojo, and shows from "The Old Grey Whistle Test" to VH-1, they don’t just recount history; they unpack the stories behind it with the ease of a shared laugh. This podcast grew naturally from their work on the late, great magazine The Word, where they began recording over thirteen years ago, building a dedicated following who found something genuinely special in the mix. Each episode weaves together music, commentary, history, and interviews, moving seamlessly from deep-dive analysis of a seminal album to a frank chat with a surprising guest, all delivered with the warmth and wit of a late-night chat. It feels less like a formal show and more like you’ve been invited to pull up a chair in a room where the anecdotes are plentiful and the expertise is worn lightly. The result is a consistently engaging listen that treats music not as a museum piece but as a living, breathing part of our lives.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

Word In Your Ear
Podcast Episodes
The glorious story of Funk from James Brown to Off The Wall [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 42:54
Old friend of the podcast Lloyd Bradley wrote Bass Culture, the defining account of reggae, and he’s now turned his attention to funk, from its deepest roots and via the jazz, arts, TV, radio and pop culture that flavour…
Nick Lowe’s miracle payday, Rock feuds and a giant inflatable Jarvis [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 50:35
Panning for gold in the murky waters of this week’s news, we found the following … … is Sabrina Carpenter’s aunt the voice of Bart Simpson? … is punk now just a small room in the giant apartment block of Goth? … why band…
The Damned at 50 and the memories (and regrets) of Rat Scabies [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 35:42
The Damned are – yes! - 50 years old with three of the originals still onboard. And just starting a world tour. In this immensely funny and touching podcast, Rat Scabies (who’s smoking!) points up the repercussions of li…