What have Seriously done to deserve this?

[NotInvisible]

So songs that they pretend don’t exist:-

Bobby O era West End girls and OMC
How can you expect to be taken seriously? Absolutely fabulous, burning the heather, she’s Madonna, Dj culturemix, break 4 love, integral. Have I missed any…..?

If you mean singles, there are a couple of weird outlier cases like Axis and Fluorescent too.

[Gabby]

Remixed singles usually do - or did.

Suburbia, Rent, Heart, Left to my own devices, It's alright... I'd say the Jealousy single was better too. I wouldn't normally do is more debatable. I think it lost something in the horns and bombast of the 7", but it depends on my mood. A red letter day never sounded right in any version.

Suburbia was definitely the template for this. It's one of the things I miss about modern PSB - single mixes are edits now, rather than remixes.

I agree. There seems to be less urgency to reinvent the song for single releases. I'm still annoyed about Thursday, and how they fixed one issue from the album version only to create a new one on the single. As a result neither versions 100% work for me.

[VRIDD]

So songs that they pretend don’t exist:-

Bobby O era West End girls and OMC
How can you expect to be taken seriously? Absolutely fabulous, burning the heather, she’s Madonna, Dj culturemix, break 4 love, integral. Have I missed any…..?

Purple zone

[Spittingcat]

Axis and Burning the heather are my two favourite lead singles that are no longer considered singles at all.

[Patrick Bateman]

I agree. There seems to be less urgency to reinvent the song for single releases. I'm still annoyed about Thursday, and how they fixed one issue from the album version only to create a new one on the single. As a result neither versions 100% work for me.

To be fair to them, they have had to edit them down to three minutes in order to get radio play, whereas back in the 80s they could pretty much do what they liked and it got played.

[telys]

So songs that they pretend don’t exist:-

Bobby O era West End girls and OMC
How can you expect to be taken seriously? Absolutely fabulous, burning the heather, she’s Madonna, Dj culturemix, break 4 love, integral. Have I missed any…..?

If you mean singles, there are a couple of weird outlier cases like Axis and Fluorescent too.

With this "since 1984"-stuff we can't really say that they pretend the first version of West End girls doesn't exist but I would definately say that they revision away everything in between West End girls'84 and West End girls'85. And it's a lot. It's all the stuff done with Bobby O..everything short of mixing the album and releasing it, the criss-crossing in '85 recording stuff until finding the right sound with Hague.
In that sense it's great that we got A Man Could Get-- 7'' which sounds like nothing else in the PSB catalogue.

[Gabby]

I also think, to be fair, they have acknowledged Opportunities was released prior to West End girls by the simple fact that on the videographies they always place the first iteration of it ahead of West End girls in the chronology.

The Bobby O stuff make for interesting curios, but I can sort of see why they would prefer to ignore it. I'd hardly call that revisionism.

[TallThinMan]

The Bobby O stuff make for interesting curios, but I can sort of see why they would prefer to ignore it. I'd hardly call that revisionism.

Let's also remember that they paid Bobby O a million dollars so they could leave all that behind and make a fresh start with Parlophone.

[Gabby]

The Bobby O stuff make for interesting curios, but I can sort of see why they would prefer to ignore it. I'd hardly call that revisionism.

Let's also remember that they paid Bobby O a million dollars so they could leave all that behind and make a fresh start with Parlophone.

Exactly - it might, in retrospect for them, not be representative of the happiest of times, so maybe they'd just prefer to leave as much of that as they can in the rearview mirror.

[telys]

The Bobby O stuff make for interesting curios, but I can sort of see why they would prefer to ignore it. I'd hardly call that revisionism.

Let's also remember that they paid Bobby O a million dollars so they could leave all that behind and make a fresh start with Parlophone.

Exactly - it might, in retrospect for them, not be representative of the happiest of times, so maybe they'd just prefer to leave as much of that as they can in the rearview mirror.

Still, after 40 years time?! That's really keeping your grudges. Laughable TBH. Sometimes it seems as if 1983 is just as living for N&C as 2025. They still keep bringing out songs demoed back then. Their view of time might be non-linear.

[TallThinMan]

Their record company doesn't have the rights to the Bobby O version of 'West End Girls' and also it wasn't a hit. Neither was the first version of 'Opportunities'.

[lalolalo]

Just came to say I love every version of Seriously to death. And that I always like to move my head as Chris does on the video when I listen to it.

The live version on Performance, with them being pinched by pigs and crushed by their own images. And then the pigs doing... well, you know. It's the greatest and closest metaphore of music business in the history of, well, music. EPIC!!!!!!

And also the best bassline in their whole catalogue (I mean the single one, of course).
And I also love that only recently I learned is "you gotta have funk" and not "You gotta have fun".

[Gabby]

Just came to say I love every version of Seriously to death. And that I always like to move my head as Chris does on the video when I listen to it.

The live version on Performance, with them being pinched by pigs and crushed by their own images. And then the pigs doing... well, you know. It's the greatest and closest metaphore of music business in the history of, well, music. EPIC!!!!!!

And also the best bassline in their whole catalogue (I mean the single one, of course).
And I also love that only recently I learned is "you gotta have funk" and not "You gotta have fun".

I love all the versions of Seriously too but the single remix should have got more recognition.

It features in a little "thought experiment" I did recently for a Spotify playlist I've called "Pet Shop Boys, Conditional" - I challenged myself to pick only two songs from every PSB studio album - and only one song from PSB EP's - that I would pick above all others from each one. It really helps you home in on what songs REALLY matter to you.

The only unfortunate part is you end up having to exclude some brilliant tracks that aren't on studio album/EPs.

[NotInvisible]

With this "since 1984"-stuff we can't really say that they pretend the first version of West End girls doesn't exist but I would definately say that they revision away everything in between West End girls'84 and West End girls'85. And it's a lot. It's all the stuff done with Bobby O..everything short of mixing the album and releasing it, the criss-crossing in '85 recording stuff until finding the right sound with Hague.

The track Pet Shop Boys is the 'lost' PSB song. Just vanished.

[Sexy Northeasterner]

It's really strange that it has never been released on any Further Listening either, but maybe it's because the single version is a remix by Brothers In Rhythm and they have only included their own remixes on the FL collections. But as a de facto single A-side it should definitely have been included on a compilation at least!

I thought the same, however the single version of I wouldn’t normally do this kind of thing appears on FL and that’s a remix by Beatmasters, also didn’t Motiv-8 remix a red letter day which also appears on FL.