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Not only that, the album has no real filler. Every song is good. That was the only time that ever happened for a PSB album. I'm hard pressed to find a theme to the album, but the songs do definately seem to fit together stylistically, at least. The first song, "One More Chance," is a much stronger entry than we saw on Please. Part of this may be my preference for dance-tempo songs (that is, I find it easier to like dance-tempo songs, but it's the really good slower songs that are often my favorite songs.) The next song, "What Have I Done To Deserve This?" which is the first PSB song to have a really long title (but not the last!) It is a duet with Dusty Springfield, and it is one of their better songs, I think. It's light and dancy, but it has real emotion, and the duet was a wonderful idea. Dusty's voice is perfect, and the song is at once chic, sophisticated and down-to-earth. "Shopping" is a more conventional dance song, but "Rent" is wonderful. It's not exactly slow, but it's not something you can dance to very well either (unless you're very creative) but it's wonderfully moody without sounding like Depeche Mode, and is artistic and emotional right away. After "Rent" comes another conventional dance song, "Hit Music." Pet Shop Boys haven't shown that slow songs were ever one of their strengths, yet "It Couldn't Happen Here" is a good song, again, moody and edgy (although with a very smooth polished sound, like the entire album) without sounding necessarily dark. The big hit, "It's a Sin" is next. This song was deservedly popular, and it's still good. Not only that, the video is still one of my favorite music videos ever. If there were songs I would call fillers, they would be "I Want to Wake Up" and "Heart." But I can't really call them fillers, because they're pretty good. Compared to the other songs on the album, they don't seem to stand out, really, though. Apparently "Heart" was a hit single in the UK, although I never heard it here. The single version, which can be found on the greatest hits album Discography had quite a bit more character than the version here, so I guess I can see it as a hit single after all. The album ends with "King's Cross," which, you should be able to guess by now, is moody, sophisticated and quite frankly, beautiful. It's not fast paced enough to dance to, but not really slow either, much like "Rent." In fact, I think it's my favorite song on the cd, although not by much.
All in all, the entire album is wonderful. It has some dance hits, like "It's a Sin," "Heart" and the lighter "What Have I Done To Deserve This?" as well as moodier slower songs like "Rent," "King's Cross" and "It Couldn't Happen Here." The Pet Shop Boys developed a truly unique sound based soundly on the more generic New Wave of Please but with nods toward classic pop (Dusty Springfield) as well as truly artistic, lush songs as well. It's unfortunate that they waited three years only to produce the absolutely awful Behavior (besides the six-song EP Introspective), but when they finally came back with Very they tried to recapture some of the Actually sound, and to a certain extent they were successful.
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