Neil Francis Tennant (born 10 July 1954) is an English singer, songwriter and music journalist, and co-founder of the synth-pop duo the Pet Shop Boys, which he formed with Chris Lowe in 1981. He was a journalist for Smash Hits, and assistant editor for the magazine in the mid-1980s. Tennant coined the phrase imperial phase to describe the period in which a musical artist is regarded to be at their commercial and creative peak simultaneously. This observation was initially self-referential, made as the Pet Shop Boy