Rumors of Neil Tennant's death are greatly exaggerated

By August Brown

Jan. 14, 2013 12 AM PT

This post has been updated. See below for details.

On Sunday night, fans of the pioneering U.K. electro-pop dup Pet Shop Boys went into panic mode after some shady online reports suggested the group’s singer Neil Tennant had died in a car crash.

The rumors seem to have begun with a story from Global Associated News, a prank page where users can plug in a public figure’s name and info and the site will generate a convincing enough-to-casual-observers news report about their death. The site had published previously widespread hoaxes about the deaths of Tiger Woods, Usher and others.

Well, a fairly authoritative source on the vitality of Tennant checked in on Twitter to squash the rumors -- the man himself.

[UPDATE: Tennant has posted on the official Pet Shop Boys page that, while it’s true that he did not die in a car crash, the Twitter handle credited to him initially denying his death was a false account. “Talk about ironic... A fake story that I’ve died in a car crash has been posted on a “prank” website and then denied on Twitter by someone pretending to be me. Neil x (Back in the studio tomorrow.) ]”

In addition to Tennant not dying, it’s been a good run of luck for Pet Shop Boys musically, having released the lauded album “Elysium” last year and with a 2013 tour in store. Indeed, if Tennant is asking some existential questions about his mortality right now, he’s already got a great soundtrack for it.

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