Christopher Sean Lowe (born 4 October 1959) is an English musician, songwriter, and co-founder of the synth-pop duo Pet Shop Boys, which he formed with Neil Tennant in 1981. He is primarily the keyboardist and occasionally a vocalist, and he is the co-author of the catalogue of Pet Shop Boys songs with his writing partner, Tennant. Lowe is known for his impassive stage persona, standing still behind a keyboard with his head and eyes covered.

Christopher Sean Lowe was born and raised in Blackpool, Lancashire, and attended Arnold School. His grandfather, Syd Flood, was a trombonist and a member of the comedy jazz troupe The Nitwits. His mother was a dancer, and his father, a sales representative, could play piano by ear. Lowe learned trombone and piano and was in the school orchestra and dance band. He studied music as an A-level subject.

Lowe played trombone in a semi-professional seven-piece dance band named One Under the Eight that performed favourites like "Hello Dolly", "La Bamba" and "Moon River", and he joined the Musicians' Union with them. He was also in a local brass band, the Norman Memorial Youth Band, and briefly played keyboards with a school rock band called Stallion.

Lowe began studying architecture at the University of Liverpool in 1978 and received a Bachelor of Arts with Honours in 1981. During a work placement in 1981 at Michael Aukett Associates architectural practice in London, he designed a staircase for an industrial estate in Milton Keynes. It was at this time that he met Neil Tennant in Chelsea Record Centre, a hi-fi shop on King's Road in London. As their music career developed, Lowe continued his architecture course and earned a Bachelor of Architecture, but did not complete the final work requirement to qualify as an architect before he and Tennant committed full time to the Pet Shop Boys in 1985.

Lowe and Tennant began writing music together shortly after their first meeting in August 1981. During their early sessions, Lowe played a Korg MS-10 monophonic synthesizer belonging to Tennant. Lowe had musical training and fluency, while Tennant was largely self-taught and had been writing his own songs for a decade. In 1982, Lowe wrote a piece of music on the piano at his family home in Blackpool and gave a cassette recording to Tennant to write lyrics. The song, "Jealousy", was later released on their fourth studio album, Behaviour (1990). Lowe called it "probably the first time I'd ever constructed a song".

Lowe has strong views about his taste in music, as he expressed in a 1986 interview with Entertainment Tonight:

I don't like country and western. I don't like rock music... I don't like rockabilly or rock and roll particularly. I don't like much really, do I? But what I do like, I love passionately.

Lowe's affinity for dance music influenced the direction of the duo's songwriting. Growing up in Blackpool, he observed, "Being in a musical environment with lots of people who were having fun to pop music... that made an impression". In London, he discovered new music being played in underground and gay clubs; his reaction at the time was, "Everything I've heard before is redundant now, this is all I like". A particular favourite of his was "Passion" by The Flirts, written and produced by Bobby Orlando in 1982. The following year, Pet Shop Boys started working with Orlando on some of their songs, including an early version of "West End Girls".