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| “Did
you se me coming?” was released in 2009 as the second single of “Yes”,
the tenth studio album of the Pet Shop Boys. The artwork was designed
by Mark Farrow using photographs of Neil & Chris taken by Alasdair McLellan,
who also took the photos for “Yes”. For this cover sleeves, Farrow kept
using the same style of the album and the squares inspired on the “Gerhard
Richter 4900 Colours: Version II” exhibition, but taken into its minimal
expression: he choose three of the colours used on the “Yes” cover sleeve
and made different combinations with them to use on the 3 different sleeves
of the single showing one of the colours as a solid background with a
desaturated photo tinted on the same colour as the back and a square in
other color right on top of either Neil and/or Chris’ face (that could
be an interpretation of the lyrics when a person doesn’t realise the importance
of a person in front of you or “Who’s who”) and the text on white with
the same inclination of the square. |
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The
promotional CD used a different style and colour combination using a
white background with a pale blue rectangle and two little red and yellow
inclined squares inside and including the Album Version and the Instrumental
Version. Then three digital downloads were released with the three different
cover sleeves, one yellow, one dark pink and one green, whit different
version of the single and a remix of on of the B Sides and a remix of
“The way it used to be”, track included in the album but never released
as a single.
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| The
commercial release of “Did you see me coming” in a physical format
within the UK included two CDs and one 12” Single. The first CD with Chris
over a yellow background in the sleeve included the ‘Album Version’ and
the B Side “After the event”, a different track compared to the first
digital single that included the studio version of the “Brits” Medley,
originally performed in the “Brit Awards 2009” along with Lady GaGa and
Brandon Flowers, where the Pet Shop Boys received the “Outstanding Contribution
to Music” award. The second CD with Neil over a dark pink background in
the sleeve included “Did you see me coming? (PSB Possibly More Mix)” with
some extra lyrics and two B Sides, “The Former Enfant Terrible” and “Up
and Down”, instead of “The Former Enfant Terrible (Bring It On Mix)” included
on the second digital single. The 12” Single showed a slightly different
treatment for the cover sleeve by increasing the size of Neil & Chris
photos almost to the edges of the sleeve in black and white over a white
background and the squares over their faces on dark pink colour, as well
as the titles including the tracklist in the front cover with Chris photo
and the credits on the back cover with Neil photo using the same colour
and style and included three tracks: the PSB Possibly More Mix and Unicorn
Kid Mix of “Did you see me coming?” and “The way it used to be (Richard
X Mix), these last two tracks included on the third digital single. |
| The
international release of the single included just one digital download
with all six tracks from the three UK digital singles with the green cover
sleeve with Chris & Neil. The US release included just the digital single
and two promotional CDs: the first one with the ‘PSB Possibly More Mix’
and two variants, a Dub Version and an Edit Version; and the second CD
with 3 new mixes commissioned to the DJ Ralphi Rosario. Finally a non
official promotional CDr was released including all the remixes available
of “Did you see me coming?” using the green cover sleeve with Chris &
Neil on it completing the set of 3 CDs in physical format. With the increasing
acceptance of digital music by that year, the physical music formats started
to lose ground resulting in an increase of bootleg CDs using the original
artwork with a surprisingly good quality and even when is not a good commercial
practice is still part of the Pet Shop Boys items market and visually
speaking, complements a PSB fan collection, a situation that should draw
the attention of the music managers to reconsider these formats because
there is certainly a market for them. |
