Product Details

97097 Discography: The Complete Singles Collection is the first greatest hits album by English synth-pop duo Pet Shop Boys, released on 4 November 1991 by Parlophone. Discography collects all of the singles released by Pet Shop Boys up to 1991 except for "How Can You Expect to Be Taken Seriously?" 16 of the 18 tracks were singles, while the last two tracks ("DJ Culture" and "Was It Worth It?") are new songs recorded exclusively for this compilation. Discography also contains a non-album single: the duo's cover version of U2's song "Where the Streets Have No Name", which later in the song breaks into the chorus of Frankie Valli's "Can't Take My Eyes Off You". Although many of the album's songs were released in other forms, this compilation only features the seven-inch single versions. Pet Shop Boys also released a companion video compilation, Videography, consisting of the music videos for each of the songs on Discography, arranged in a slightly different order. Additionally, the song "Was It Worth It?" was replaced with "How Can You Expect to Be Taken Seriously?", which was not on the audio version of the album, despite being a double A-side with "Where the Streets Have No Name (I Can't Take My Eyes off You)" (the exclusion being due to the constrictions of the CD's running time). Critical reception Professional ratings Review scores Source Rating AllMusic StarStarStarStarStar[1] Calgary Herald A[3] The Encyclopedia of Popular Music StarStarStarStarStar[4] Entertainment Weekly A+[2] NME 10/10[5] Q StarStarStarStarStar[6] The Rolling Stone Album Guide StarStarStarStarStar[7] The Village Voice A[8] Upon its release, Andrew Collins of NME praised the compilation as "sublime and clever pop music" and added that you "don't have to despise rock music in order to love it". He added, "These songs are rooted in a distinctly bourgeois variety of urban angst but just think how closer it all is to your life than 'Vienna' and all that New Romantic nonsense to which the PSBs are so clearly indebted."[5] Simon Price of Melody Maker summarised, "Somehow the lush symphonic sweep of these singles seems deeply cinematic. Every song is a full-scale Panavision epic whose recurrent moods are regret, nostalgia, and above all, jealousy. If you want near-faultless shimmering, shuddering disco melodrama, nobody does it better."[9]