There was a time around 1994-96 when almost every website was like this: dense, tightly focused, produced by someone with an amateur passion for the topic.
Today it seems that content in that mold is much more likely to be walled inside social media sites, shared with relatively small like-minded groups.
I searched "Pet shop boys go west" in google, and this page was below the fold, despite me having just visited it. Ahead of it was a bunch of videos (ok), lyrics pages (I only need one), a wikia page, a few ways to buy the album, two (!) different links to quora, and a bunch of ways to stream the song.
I dunno if this site has poor SEO or these other sites are gamifying it. The quora links really baffled me, and I'm surprised at just how many different streaming/lyrics sites popped up before I got to a different type of useful info.
I obviously have no idea how Google works but I do wonder if it's because they don't index like they use to, so rich content can't be evaluated as such. For example, HN comment pages are typically in the "index", in that you can get them to turn up in a search, but you'll find that +"exact quote from comment" will return 0 results. It's as if Google doesn't care much what the page is actually about.
As legit bearers of the "great white-nerd hope" crown, Pet shop boys never where small in Europe, but they were clearly too much for US. not only gay, but (their worse sin) too much focused in politics and history (socialist history) to be accepted.
In the game of writing catchy songs that are well crafted and don't feel stupid, still can beat most of the current pop stars with both hands tied back. They still show the cool factor here and there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooIWFjD-Y84
Or even better: the magnificient Love Comes Quickly
It's not so tragic. Being into a "gay group" in the 90s gave one the ability to signal a common interest while retaining deniability.
I mean, you don't get any gayer than this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IXuRCeQKOg
I've seen both Liza and the Boys in concert (and I've seen Follies!) but sadly not at the same time.
Pet Shop Boys often write deceptively simple lyrics with a lot of hidden context. Without webs like this page, most of the context, can fly over the radar for non gay people, and the same song, referenced locations etc, will mean also different things to non UK people. Kings Cross is just a song about a train station, Right? If you force the context as gay by default, some songs turn much more clear, but also smaller, less universal, and less accessible to non gay people.
But we talk also about a group that have strong links with computers and nerd life. Computer graphics in the Liberation video for example were notable for a 90's videoclip. nobody was doing that in pop. They even appear in the Tetris film
Them being popular in NY is not at all surprising.