"Can't Be Sure" was the 1989 debut single by the British alternative pop group The Sundays

The Sundays

The Sundays were an English alternative rock band. The band formed in the late 1980s and released three albums in the 1990s.-Career:The band's beginnings came with the meeting of Harriet Wheeler and guitarist David Gavurin at university. Wheeler had played gigs with 'Cruel Shoes' an early...

. It was the first (and in the UK, only) single to be released from their album Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic

Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic

Reading, Writing and Arithmetic is the first album by The Sundays. It was released in the United Kingdom on Rough Trade Records, and in the United States on Geffen Records...

, 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:

And It's my love, And 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

John Peel

John Robert Parker Ravenscroft, OBE , known professionally as John Peel, was an English disc jockey, radio presenter, record producer and journalist. He was the longest-serving of the original BBC Radio 1 DJs, broadcasting regularly from 1967 until his death in 2004...

's Festive Fifty

Festive Fifty

The Festive Fifty was originally an annual list of the year's fifty best songs compiled at the end of the year and voted for by listeners to John Peel's BBC Radio 1 show...

for 1989.