Songoftheday 8/31/15 - When I look back upon my life it's always with a sense of shame, I've always been the one to blame...

"It's A Sin" - Pet Shop Boys
from the album Actually (1987)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #9 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 10

Today's SOTD comes from the Pet Shop Boys, the British electropop duo that broke through big with their debut album Please with the #1 "West End Girls" and top-10 "Oppurtunities". In 1987 Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe released their second effort Actually, with the dramatic first single "It's A Sin". Written by the pair and produced by Stephen Hague and Julian Mendelsohn, and sonically it was miles ahead of their first...


Pet Shop Boys - It's a Sin (1987) by darkub

"It's A Sin" became the Boys' third top-10 hit in November of 1987. The extended version climbed to #3 on Billboard's Dance Club Play chart as well. Internationally, the record was one of the biggest, topping the charts in Germany, Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, and their native England.

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And here's the 12" version that went to the top-3 of the dance chart...

The song has been a staple of their live shows. This is their MCMLXXXIX tour in 1989..

And again for their Performance show in 1991...

Fast forward three years for their Discovery tour in 1994, where they "mashed up" the song with the disco classic " I Will Survive"...

They reprised the medley in 1997 for their Somewhere shows...

Next up is their Nightlife tour in 1999...

The duo headlined Glastonbury in 2000...

Their Fundamental tour was released on DVD as Cubism in 2006...

Here they are again in 2009 for their Pandemonium show...

...and the last show of theirs that I saw, on the Electric tour...

The Boys reinvented the song for the Parkinson show in 2004...

And finally, from the original American 12", the Phil Harding Mix which took the song in a Latin direction like the Expose's and Cover Girls of the time...

 
Up tomorrow: A sax-man is romantically impatient.