Can't Be Sure

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“Can't Be Sure”
Single by The Sundays from the album Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic
B-side	"I Kicked a Boy", "Don't Tell Your Mother"
Released	1989
Recorded	1989
Genre	Pop
Length	3:22
Label	Rough Trade Records
Writer(s)	David Gavurin, Harriet Wheeler
Producer	The Sundays, Ray Shulman
The Sundays singles chronology
- "Can't Be Sure" (1989) "Here's Where the Story Ends" (1990)

"Can't Be Sure" was the 1989 debut single by the British alternative pop group The Sundays. It was the first (and in the UK, only) single to be released from their album Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic, which appeared a year later. The B-side was "I Kicked a Boy", which also appeared on the album. The 12" single contained an additional, non-album track, "Don't Tell Your Mother".

The song's lyrical theme is "desire", treated as a general concept rather than being directed towards anything or anyone in particular.

And did you know desire's a terrible thing?

The worst that I can find

Did you know desire's a terrible thing?

But I rely on mine.

By the song's closing refrain, the song's narrator appears to have come to terms with, if not necessarily resolved, the dichotomy:

It's my life, it's my life

And though I can't be sure if I want any more

It will come to me later.

The single was voted number one in John Peel's Festive Fifty for 1989.