“Miracles” by Pet Shop Boys

"Miracles" was the fresh bait on PopArt: The Hits, the Pet Shop Boys' 2003 greatest-hits set, going out as its lead single on 17 November, and the plan was brazen: electroclash welded to hip-hop beats. Merck Mercuriadis, a manager they shared with Adam F, introduced Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe to the drum and bass man, who had already sketched part of the song with DJ Fresh. Stuart Crichton added production and keyboards and straightened it into a four-on-the-floor strut, and Anne Dudley, an old ally from Very in 1993, arranged and conducted the orchestration.

Tennant, who sings it, took his cue from a book of Elizabethan metaphysical poetry, and the lyric leans on the natural world to say that the right person makes everything look miraculous. It climbed to number 10 in the UK, with BBC Radio 2 providing most of its airplay audience.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.