Lead Singles - Commercial Comparison

[Drico One]

Can you forgive her?'s first week sales have been revealed as 1,514, making it their seventh-biggest opener to that point. It suffered a significant fall off compared to So hard, however.

Interestingly, it sold almost precisely the same amount as Where the streets have no name, suggesting that they were indeed selling to the same hermetically-sealed audience in the early 1990s.

I have also added all details of the 1991 singles to earlier posts in this thread for posterity. Interestingly (to me, at least), Jealousy was outsold by Was it worth it? on its first week, but still sold 25,000 more copies overall - and 15,000 more than DJ culture. DJ culture, a brand new single, massively underperformed. I recall a news article in Melody Maker or the NME at the time saying the PSBs were outraged over a distribution issue, which cost it vital sales and crucial chart positions. True or not, it sold slightly more than Jealousy did on week one, but one was a brand new single and the other a mere remixed version...

DJ culture was the first single to actually lose sales in week two. Was it worth it? made that a trend.

Earlier posts updated with details.

Drico.

[petshopgrrl]

Thanks for bumping this, Drico! I missed it the first time around but now I'm poring obsessively over the data!

I have to admit I'd never really given much thought to the intricacies of sales and chart placings but it's pretty wild to see something like "West End girls" making number 1 on LESS sales than the week before, or how few sales can separate two chart placings depending on what you're up against.

[telys]

Can you forgive her?'s first week sales have been revealed as 1,514, making it their seventh-biggest opener to that point. It suffered a significant fall off compared to So hard, however.

Interestingly, it sold almost precisely the same amount as Where the streets have no name, suggesting that they were indeed selling to the same hermetically-sealed audience in the early 1990s.

I have also added all details of the 1991 singles to earlier posts in this thread for posterity. Interestingly (to me, at least), Jealousy was outsold by Was it worth it? on its first week, but still sold 25,000 more copies overall - and 15,000 more than DJ culture. DJ culture, a brand new single, massively underperformed. I recall a news article in Melody Maker or the NME at the time saying the PSBs were outraged over a distribution issue, which cost it vital sales and crucial chart positions. True or not, it sold slightly more than Jealousy did on week one, but one was a brand new single and the other a mere remixed version...

DJ culture was the first single to actually lose sales in week two. Was it worth it? made that a trend.

Earlier posts updated with details.

Drico.

Well they had the problem of DJ Culture and DJ Culturemix being regarded as two separate releases by the charts. That probably lowered the sales statistics for the main release.

[Drico One]

Can you forgive her? increased its sales in week 2 to 1,754, a 16% increase, but was well off any of the singles in front of it. This ended the short trend of late 1991 of negative sales in week 2.

While it was their seventh-biggest opener in terms of week 1 sales, it was only their 10th-biggest seller in week 2, and their 10th-biggest seller over the first 14 days.

Drico.

[jasonjohn]

The difference a zany music video makes, maybe

[retrofuturist]

Greetings,

It was a very different tale for Can You Forgive Her? in the Australian charts...

Can you forgive her?-AUS.png

The site I link to can't speak definitively about anything prior to Heart, but from Heart onwards, that's a local record for Pet Shop Boys - staying in the Aussie Top 40 with a single for 17 weeks.

Source: https://australian-charts.com/

Retro.

[joe stalin]

My recall of Nicky Campbell is he was one of the good guys. I remember him waxing lyrical over DJ Culture and calling Neil a pop intellectual. He always struck me as being a bit more substantial than some of his Smashie and Nicey comtemporaries.

Drico.

In my opinion, Nicky Campbell was (and may well still be) a big supporter of the boys. On radio 1, he actually dedicated a full 30 mins of back to back PSB tunes in his morning show. It was mega. He never appeared to be anything other than complimentary.

Mark Goodier was also a big PSB supporter. I remember him playing extensively the PSB remix of girls and boys on his afternoon show and he also played brick England when he was covering in radio 2.

[tottenhammattspurs]

Gary Davies is another supporter of the boys. In fact he was the first radio one Dj to play west end girls way back in October 1985.

Do we have sales details on the boys worst selling single? The last song to enter in the uk top 100 was Thursday but even that got higher than winner which got in at a lowly 86. Singles since then obviously don’t chart at all but they still have sales (as the physical chart and sales chart prove) but what is the lowest selling? My guess is “I Don’t Wanna”.

Third (fourth) single from hotspot, bang in the middle of Covid. Can’t see this getting more than a few 1000 units sold.

[retrofuturist]

Greetings,

Do we have sales details on the boys worst selling single? The last song to enter in the uk top 100 was Thursday but even that got higher than winner which got in at a lowly 86. Singles since then obviously don’t chart at all but they still have sales (as the physical chart and sales chart prove) but what is the lowest selling? My guess is “I Don’t Wanna”.

Third (fourth) single from hotspot, bang in the middle of Covid. Can’t see this getting more than a few 1000 units sold.

It's also about the most boring single they have ever put out. How that track was put out as a single whilst Will-O-The-Wisp remained on the shelf will always be a mystery to me.

Questions about their lowest selling single are going to be heavily distorted by the availability of formats and volumes - I'd expect Axis, Integral, Inner Sanctum and Love Life to come in pretty low on that count. If we're sticking to the Smash & Nonetheless singles though, I'd guess that you are correct.

Retro.

[jasonjohn]

It was a very different tale for Can You Forgive Her? in the Australian charts...

I remember Michael Tunn on JJJ being a big fan and played it constantly. Except he didn't realise until much later it was a double CD release, and was playing the MK mix. The MK mix did work better on certain stations, for sure.

JJJ also played My Head Is Spinning fully a couple of times. Quite a contrast to the idie guitar pop of the time!

This single was the first time I'd seen a double CD release. I wonder how many people accidentally bought the wrong CD and went back for the second, or felt obligated to buy both.

[retrofuturist]

Greetings,

This single was the first time I'd seen a double CD release. I wonder how many people accidentally bought the wrong CD and went back for the second, or felt obligated to buy both.

From memory, it was actually CD2 that came out first. CD1 only turned up in the stores a few weeks later. I'd already bought both UK CD singles via import from Central Station Records but was baffled that CD1 took so long to find in the regular music shops. We'd never had any more than one CD single released before for any Pet Shop Boys song and I suspect releasing CD2 first (or even at all?) was a c***-up on EMI Australia's part. Perhaps that accounted for the slow chart ramp up and longevity of the sales? Possibly people ended up buying the cassette single too? I remember that the cassette single was the only local way you could get hold of the single version of I Wouldn't Normally Do This Kind Of Thing or Euroboy, for example. Crazy times.

As for Triple J I remember them embracing a bit of Eurodance at the time - Culture Beat, Snap, Twenty 4 Seven, 2 Unlimited, KLF, Opus III etc. I guess Very-era Pet Shop Boys (and Ace of Base who they also gave airplay to) were a bit of a nice pop medium to bridge that with their usual indie fare.

One thing is for sure... the pre-Internet era was certainly challenging for Aussie Petheads! It took a lot of time and effort to investigate and find out what was going on (often at the newsagent via the UK music press and Record Collector). I even remember as a 12 year old calling up EMI Australia every now and then after school to see if they had any new Pet Shop Boys releases coming. The lady on the other end of the phone was very polite and accommodating, even if somewhat puzzled by my semi-regular calls. For a while, thanks to her, I thought "Behaviour" was going to be called "TBA", so she certainly got me back on the puzzlement front. Only later did I come to learn the meaning of that particular three letter acronym.

Retro.

[Ramzy]

I even remember as a 12 year old calling up EMI Australia every now and then after school to see if they had any new Pet Shop Boys releases coming. The lady on the other end of the phone was very polite and accommodating, even if somewhat puzzled by my semi-regular calls. For a while, thanks to her, I thought "Behaviour" was going to be called "TBA", so she certainly got me back on the puzzlement front. Only later did I come to learn the meaning of that particular three letter acronym.

Loved this! Though the Can you forgive her? chat has reminded me of another conundrum - can anyone who was there confirm whether the single actually came out in the UK on 31 May 1993 (the bank holiday Monday) or 1 June? I'd figured that surely at least some shops were still open on the Monday and therefore would have stocked the single. But I've just seen a poster for the release that actually states 1 June as the street date, so maybe it was actually formally released on a Tuesday after all?

[andmaste]

Loved this! Though the Can you forgive her? chat has reminded me of another conundrum - can anyone who was there confirm whether the single actually came out in the UK on 31 May 1993 (the bank holiday Monday) or 1 June? I'd figured that surely at least some shops were still open on the Monday and therefore would have stocked the single. But I've just seen a poster for the release that actually states 1 June as the street date, so maybe it was actually formally released on a Tuesday after all?

https://www.psbcq.it/index.php?option=c ... Itemid=155

Available 1.6.93

[andmaste]

[Gabby]

I even remember as a 12 year old calling up EMI Australia every now and then after school to see if they had any new Pet Shop Boys releases coming. The lady on the other end of the phone was very polite and accommodating, even if somewhat puzzled by my semi-regular calls. For a while, thanks to her, I thought "Behaviour" was going to be called "TBA", so she certainly got me back on the puzzlement front. Only later did I come to learn the meaning of that particular three letter acronym.

Loved this! Though the Can you forgive her? chat has reminded me of another conundrum - can anyone who was there confirm whether the single actually came out in the UK on 31 May 1993 (the bank holiday Monday) or 1 June? I'd figured that surely at least some shops were still open on the Monday and therefore would have stocked the single. But I've just seen a poster for the release that actually states 1 June as the street date, so maybe it was actually formally released on a Tuesday after all?

Yeah, I love everyone's PSB memories and anecdotes. I share whenever I can too - good fun.

I was pretty hardcore and would buy PSB records around this time on the day of release without fail, but unfortunately this isn't something I remember. I didn't keep the receipts!

At the time I was working for my parents, so we would 100% have been at home and not going out anywhere. I suppose it's possible I could have snuck out first thing in the morning and nipped into Birmingham to buy them on the Monday if say HMV was typically open on a bank holiday Monday.

If not though, you can bet I was in Solihull at lunchtime the next day, Tuesday, buying these!

EDIT: Actually, I was at the Peter Gabriel Secret World concert at Earls Court. I looked at the dates for that and it was May 31 and June 1. I'd have to check which day I was actually there, but willing to bet it was the Monday. PSB connection is that the Can you forgive her? poster was right outside the venue and I was quite excited to see it as we rolled in to see the concert. So yep, probably bought those records the very next day, June 1!