A Red Letter Day

"A Red Letter Day"
Single by Pet Shop Boys
from the album Bilingual
B-side "The Boy Who Couldn't Keep His Clothes On"
Released March 18, 1997
Format CD single, cassette single
Recorded 1995
Genre Dance-pop
Length 5:09 (album version)
4:32 (single remix)
Label Parlophone
Writer(s) Neil Tennant, Chris Lowe
Producer Pet Shop Boys
Pet Shop Boys singles chronology
"Single-Bilingual"
(1996)		 "A Red Letter Day"
(1997)		 "Somewhere"
(1997)

"A Red Letter Day" is a single by British electronic music group Pet Shop Boys. It was released the fourth single from their 1996 album Bilingual on March 17, 1997. The single peaked at high #9 on the UK Singles Chart, making it another top 10 single for the group. However it then fell straight out the UK top 40 (to #42) the following week.[1] At the time, this was a record as the biggest such fall to ever occur in UK chart history, but it was then beaten five months later by Embrace with their single "My Weakness is None of Your Business" (which fell from #9 to #44 the following week).[2]

The duo were big admirers of the Motiv8 sound who had remixed various other artists at the time. Neil Tennant asked the man behind Motiv8 (Steve Rodway) to remix this single. He even went to visit Rodway at work in his studio during the remix. Ironically after it was finished and delivered, Tennant insisted a synth line which Rodway had come up with on the Motiv8 version, should be used on the Pet Shop Boys' own main mix. After trying unsuccessfully to recreate Rodway's riff it eventually had to be sampled from the Motiv8 mix, thus it appears on both the Pet Shop Boys' main version as well as the Motiv8 remix.

Contents

Track listing

UK 2-part CD single set: Parlophone/CDRS 6452

CD 1

  1. "A Red Letter Day"
  2. "The Boy Who Couldn't Keep His Clothes On"
  3. "Delusions of Grandeur"
  4. "A Red Letter Day" (Moscow Mix)

CD 2

  1. "A Red Letter Day" (Trouser Autoerotic Decapitation Mix)
  2. "A Red Letter Day" (Motiv 8 Twelve Inch Master Mix)
  3. "A Red Letter Day" (Basement Jaxx Vocal Mix)
  4. "A Red Letter Day" (PSB Extended Edit)
  5. "A Red Letter Day" (Trouser Enthusiasts Congo Dongo Dubstramental)

UK cassette single

  1. "A Red Letter Day"
  2. "The Boy Who Couldn't Keep His Clothes On"

Official versions

  1. Album version – 5:09
  2. Basement Jaxx Nite Dub – 6:07
  3. Basement Jaxx Vocal mix – 6:50
  4. Moscow mix – 5:39
  5. Motiv8 Cyber Dub mix – 7:11
  6. Motiv8 12" Master mix – 6:58
  7. PSB extended edit – 5:39
  8. Expanded single version – 5:36
  9. Single remix – 4:34
  10. Trouser Autoerotic Decapitation mix – 10:04
  11. Trouser Enthusiasts Congo Dongo Dubstramental – 8:06

Chart performance

Chart (1997) Peak
position		 Total
weeks
Finnish Singles Chart[3] 18 1
German Singles Chart[4] 55 9
Swedish Singles Chart[5] 30 3
UK Singles Chart[6] 9 3

References

  1. ^ "Chart Stats".
  2. ^ "Chart Stats".
  3. ^ http://www.finnishcharts.com/
  4. ^ http://www.musicline.de/
  5. ^ http://www.swedishcharts.com/
  6. ^ http://www.chartstats.com/
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