|
|
| “Christmas”
was released in December 2009 as an Extended Play (EP) and fourth single
of “Yes”, the tenth studio album of Pet Shop Boys. The cover artwork was
designed by Mark Farrow using photographs taken by John Ross who worked
with the band previously on “Fundamental” and its singles and showed a
lot of balloons in different colours with monochrome faces of Neil & Chris
on each one. The EP was planned to be titled “All over the world’ (as
it is written on the back cover of the promotional CDs) as a direct single
for the album but the release date was set to December and included a
new version of their 1997 song “It doesn’t often snow at Christmas” that
was released as a gift CD to members of the fan club, reason why they
decided to change the name to “Christmas”. In addition to a new version
of “All over the world” and “It doesn’t often snow at Christmas”, the
EP also included two versions of “My girl” a cover version of Madness’
classic and the studio version of the mashup Coldplay’s “Viva la vida”
and “Domino dancing” that was played on the “Pandemonium Tour”. |
|
|
| Two
different one-track promotional singles were released a month before the
commercial release of “Christmas”, one with a green balloon showing
Chris’ face on it and included “All over the world (New Version)”; the
other one had a red balloon showing Neil’s face on it and included “It
doesn’t often snow at christmas (2009 Mix). The release was marketed mostly
in UK & Europe with a few editions in Asian countries and promotional
copies in local european markets. There is an unofficial double CD released
in Russia titled “Christmas Etc.” with the same artwork that includes
all five tracks of the original release plus another 30 tracks including
recent Sides, Mixes and Demos that was issued in a Digipak case and limited
to 300 copies. As an extension of the artwork, a Brazilian-only |
|
Compilation
CD was released with the title “Pet Shop Boys - Party” showing different
shots of the balloons with Neil & Chris on the cover and inside the
booklet; this Compilation CD included 16 tracks, most of them hit singles
and one rare track: “Go west (Mark Stent 7” Mix) which has so far only
surfaced on a few compilation CDs but not on an official Pet Shop Boys
release. One final appearance of the balloons artwork was seen on the
2009 Christmas Card sent to the members of the Pet Shop Boys Fan Club
as a resemblance of the original 1997 card that included the minimax
CD with “It doesn’t often snow at christmas”, printed in a ‘snowflake’
design with the message "Happy holidays from Pet Shop Boys" in small
white lettering and packaged in an oversized sealed silver bubblewrap
sleeve, one of the very rare items for PSB collector’s around the world.
|
