Nineties Revisited: Can You Forgive Her

Original video located here. Accessed 25th May 2023

Song title: Can You Forgive Her

Artist: Pet Shop Boys

Year: 1993

Why I like this song:

More explorations with the Pet Shop Boys.

I remember this, and Go West, as being huge hits at the time. Also there was a lot of buzz going around at the time that these guys were still getting hits even when they were of the previous decade and were supposed to have been cast aside in the changing of the guard. Obviously Neil and Chris didn't get the memo and instead mastered the house music of the time and made some strange videos that utilised early CGI.

That aside, Very is quite a strange album: the gay sub-context of Behaviour has now come to the forefront. This is due to Neil coming out of closet prior to the album and, from the sounds of it, he certainly seems happy about it. But then again, perhaps the Pet Shop Boys had exhausted their melancholy with Behaviour so the only direction left to go was to make something exuberant. 

Such an approach shouldn't work in pop music but here it does.