Can't Be Sure

Infobox Single
Name = Can't Be Sure


Artist = The Sundays
from Album = Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic
B-side = "I Kicked a Boy", "Don't Tell Your Mother"
Released = 1989
Recorded = 1989
Genre = Pop
Label = Rough Trade Records
Length = 3:22
Writer = David Gavurin, Harriet Wheeler
Producer = The Sundays, Ray Shulman
Last single = -
This single = "Can't Be Sure" (1989)
Next single = "Here's Where the Story Ends" (1990)

"Can't Be Sure" was the 1989 debut single by the British alternative pop group The Sundays. It was the first (and in the UK, only) single to be released from their album "Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic", 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:

:"It's my life, 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's Festive Fifty for 1989.