Cupid & Psyche 85

For me this was a case of amazing bookends, but "good" rest of the album. I thought The Word Girl was a very interesting song and really enjoyed it, and thought Hypnotize was the catchiest song on the album.
While this group pales in comparison to Michael, Prince, etc, the production was pretty impressive. I could only imagine "Powerline" performing these hits. 3.4/5 -> 3/5

Not an enjoyable experience!

Y'know, there *are* a few moments here I dig alright, including some of the guitar work in "Small Talk". But overall, this brand/era of synthpop is about as unappealing to me as can be.

1.5/5

At first, I thought my review would be something along the lines of “Bit boring. Generic pop for the time; inoffensive but lacking the oompf of their contemporaries”. However the second half hit and that side of the album was fun and I really liked it.

So much 80’s cheese on here! But I didn’t mind it. Most of it didn’t age well, but when it hits, it hits! Wood Beez is the best song in here for sure! I’d give this more of a 2.75. But we’ll round it up to a 3.

I'm feeling bad about giving the Style Council one star now, because this is clearly worse by some quite large measure. I hate the weedy vocals on it so much.

Hey I recognized one of these songs, "Wood Beez," an innocuous dance track that I used to hear on the radio that obviously didn't really get my attention since I wouldn't have been able to tell you what band it was at the time.

This stuff isn't terrible, just uninteresting to me, maybe a bland version of Michael Jackson.

Meh, 2 stars

As suggested via another review, this feels like the soundtrack to an unmade Police Academy movie. I would much rather have listened to an hour of the Police Academy guy making cool sounds than this soft-core sonic sodomy.

Very "of the time" pop, which didn't make it bad, but it certainly wasn't great.

Of all the 80's slop on here, this has to be the worst. Uninteresting tracks and using the same synths as everyone else in this decade makes it hard to stand out. At least it was over quick. It has some surprising earworms though, Wood Beez got stuck in my head really fast.

Mind was empty the entire time I listened throughout this album. A veritable mediocre smorgasbord of pop.

Ducky remembered this from the '80s but I didn't. . It was fine

The reggae rhythm that we drop into immediately here is like a bullet to the head, and these vocals on top of it is like feeling the bullet come out the other side. And no, I don't know exactly what I mean by that. I don't even feel comfortable saying it's bad, I feel better claiming that this feels like staring at the sun. Despite being, theoretically, easy listening, something about the presentation of this just stupefies me. This sounds like the members of Wham were put into a trash compactor and polished into a single, perfect cube. This band's spotify biography reads like a combination of an essay on Scott Walker and a eulogy for a controversial politician. This band was founded by a leftist thinker, linguist, and underground artist who became progressively more interested int absurdly polished pop music. The lyrics here maintain the interest in linguistics and politics, but also try to be sexy with it. Like this sounds like a joke. Although after sitting on it a little, I think it’s kind of good? The tone and writing here has something stylized and ultra angular going on, that actually kind of makes the absurdly clean presentation make a little sense. Sometimes it’s cool, but sometimes it just sounds like the most “pop” music anyone has ever made. It gets a low three for being weirdly compelling, and for just existing in such a fascinating way. This was unexpectedly interesting, and maybe, just maybe there’s a post-modern masterpiece somewhere in here, but if so, I also must say that it probably isn’t for me to find.

I have to admit I'm taking a perverse pleasure in how much the 80s choices on this list baffle so many of the reviewers. This album was really popular when it came out and defined that 80s pop sound as much as any other. It wasn't a follower. If you read the UK music press at the time you wouldn't be surprised to see this on the list. The book is very obviously the product of that UK music journo culture and that culture loved this album. It's archly intellectual while being pop enough for Radio 1. That was catnip for UK music journalists. Green was guaranteed to say a lot more in interviews than "we're only doing it for the music". The press loved his progression from post punk Avant spikiness to indie pop to New York produced chart pop. They felt like they'd smuggled one of their own into the mainstream.

It stinks!

decent pop album, but they need to figure out outros.

Soooo, not sure why this band is here they weren’t even a major mover and shaker in 80s British pop, they are certainly no Duran Duran, or even Wham.
Jeez I cant stand this, the synths just hurt my head. I have now started screaming in a high-pitched voice MAKE IT STOP and this is from someone who feels pop is a perfectly acceptable musical genre. How much did Scritti or Politti pay to have their album here. That is the question. Yet this album did get great reviews across the board and so I am flummoxed, for me this is meaningless pap. I rest my case.

Some good melodies in here, but this is mainly vapid, meaningless, syrupy, commercial pop with god-awful 80s production.

2.0/5.0: Disappointing

this was a rollercoaster. like many others i saw the negative reviews and wondered how a pop album was so negatively received. immediately upon starting the album i was in full agreement with the reviews. everything just felt like a vapid ripoff of stuff better artists were doing. then around the middle of the album there was a few songs that felt like they actually put effort into. then the last few songs they decided to go back to making soulless garbage.

That first song, The World Girl, doing the faux reggae just killed me. Honestly, I thought there was nothing redeeming about this. I'm not even sure this was good for the time.