Tiscali reports the Pet Shop Boys have slammed the current crop of UK pop stars as band member Chris Lowe said, “When we started as a pop group in the 80s we were proud to be a pop group. But that doesn’t really exist anymore – look at S Club 7, Westlife, etc. Everyone wants to be taken seriously rather than as a pop group, yet most of them don’t even write their own songs! In our time, we always wrote our own stuff, and still do – so did Soft Cell, Culture Club, Heaven 17, etc. Pop music had some sort of integrity then.”