Happy Anniversary: Pet Shop Boys, VERY

25 years ago today, Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe – known collectively as Pet Shop Boys – released their fifth studio album, an LP which provided the duo with two top-10 singles and three additional top-20 singles.

Produced by Tennant and Lowe with the assistance of Stephen Hague and Brothers in Rhythm, a.k.a. the production trio consisting of Steve Anderson, Dave Seaman and Alan Bremner, VERY was the first Pet Shop Boys album to emerge since 1990’s BEHAVIOUR. (In between the two LPs, however, they did release the best-of compilation, DISCOGRAPHY.) It’s fair to say that anyone who was expecting to hear an album in the same musical vein as the duo’s previous album was probably a little startled by the decidedly more upbeat material to be found on VERY, but if anyone was complaining, their grievances were drowned out by the rapturous reception by the majority of the record-buying public, who bought a heck of a lot of copies of the thing.

“Can You Forgive Her?” and “Go West” were the album’s first two singles, and they were also the two aforementioned top-10 hits, hitting #7 and #2, respectively, while “I Wouldn’t Normally Do This Kind of Thing,” “Liberation,” and “Yesterday, When I Was Mad” hit #13, #14, and #13, respectively. VERY, meanwhile, was a platinum-selling album in the UK, Australia, Germany, and Switzerland, and it went gold in numerous other countries.

Yes, even America. If that doesn’t confirm that VERY was very, very popular, nothing will.