Can you forgive her?
A single, ’Can you forgive her?’, was released on June 1, 1993. The song, which takes its title from a novel by Anthony Trollope, “is a sort of a short story. It starts with a man being awake in the night, and he can’t get to sleep because he’s been made a fool of by his girlfriend, who thinks he’s not masculine enough. In the first verse he’s embarrassed and annoyed at his girlfriend. In the second one he reveals that the girlfriend thinks he’s a complete wimp, even in bed. Then in the third verse he goes back in time to his first sexual experience at school, and you realize that he’s gay but can’t face up to the fact”. For the accompanying photographs and video, the Pet Shop Boys appear in orange body suits and dunces caps designed by David Fielding, who designed the 1991 Performance Tour. “We wanted to do something that is the opposite of what everyone else is doing”, Neil explains, “Everyone else is being real, so we’re being artificial”.