Reissue of the Week: Scritti Politti’s Songs To Remember

“I find the Scritti Politti syndrome absolutely hysterical,” said Duran Duran’s fedora-topped bassist John Taylor, reviewing the singles for Melody Maker in September 1982. “All these… radical Rough Trade bands suddenly deciding they want to be pop stars. They seem to have everything right but the songs. They have no perfect pop writers.” Taylor could speak with commercial authority at least, but the tell was he’d heard about Scritti Politti and their scheme to invade and master pop. Green’s new doctrine had spread in mere months.

Only in May, Green had laid out his starry ambitions to Lynden Barber, again in Melody Maker. “I think [Songs To Remember] is… a bit of a milestone in British pop,” he claimed. “It’s a question of simply making the decision that there are now standards that you want to attain”. Pop perfection was the aim. He hadn’t always seemed so focused on that.

Singer / guitarist Green and old Cwmbran schoolmate / bassist Nial Jinks formed Scritti Politti – a catchier rendering of Italian Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci’s Scritti Politici – with drummer Tom Morley at Leeds Poly in 1977 before relocating, notoriously, to a Camden squat where they made none-more-scratchy, dubby agit-pop that teetered on the edge of collapse in both form and philosophy. It caught the ear of Geoff Travis at Rough Trade and, particularly, Ian Penman at NME, who had been seduced by the “prickly, perfectly downbeat dance” of 1979 debut single ‘Skank Bloc Bologna’ and its deconstructuralist sleeve breaking down every element of the record’s cost. At this point, Green appeared more concerned with “the bankruptcy of a formalist approach” than any Top 40 opportunities.

But that all changed. Not far into 1980, after a gig with Gang Of Four in Brighton, Green had a panic attack masquerading as cardiac arrest and, retreating from the weak glare of minor fame, holed up in Wales for most of the year to rewrite Scritti Politti’s DNA. He immersed himself in Aretha, Michael Jackson, Stax, Chic, Randy Crawford, and returned with a written-out proposal to convince Jinks and Morley of the way forward. 

Whether Green’s screed mentioned he’d be dumping the tough, flat, estuary accent he’d adopted on earlier recordings is moot. His new, sugary, transatlantic tones were now a calling card on their own, but they accompanied a radical change of sound. ‘The “Sweetest Girl”’ – its exacting title an indication of Green’s explorations into pop’s use of language – was the first output, opening NME’s C81 compilation in January 1981 but later a single, welcomed by Paul Du Noyer as “low-key linguistic high-jinks over a mellifluous, subversively romantic soundtrack”. It also featured Robert Wyatt – whose blunt, naturalistic way of singing Green had surely mimicked and left behind with those old Scritti songs – on eerie keyboards. He would turn up again on ‘Asylums In Jerusalem’ and ‘Gettin’ Havin’ & Holdin’. 

After another period of self-care, the wonderful, stuttering soul ballad ‘Faithless’ was the next single, in May 1982. “Simultaneously dated and futuristic’, according to Melody Maker’s Patrick Humphries, and “uncatchy but mesmeric” for Charles Shaar Murray in NME, its Dior perfume-bottle sleeve matched the high-end veneer of Scritti’s sound, continuing a parodic aesthetic that had started with ‘The “Sweetest Girl”’s Dunhill-packet cover, would move on to ‘Asylums In Jerusalem’s Courvoisier design and inform Scritti sleeves in perpetuity. Surface as valuable as content.

 ‘Asylums’ was the last single before Songs To Remember finally arrived in September, a rascally but Nietzsche-influenced skank with gospel-like vocals from West End singers Lorenza Johnson, Mae McKenna and Jackie Challenor that would shimmer, whoop and respond throughout the album. Three singles with little in common gave scant notice of what Songs To Remember promised. A summary of New Pop, everything went into it: reggae on ‘Asylums’, ‘Rock-A-Boy Blue’ – which slinks into jazz with Mgotse Mothie’s improvised double bass – and ‘The “Sweetest Girl”’, more refined lovers rock with ‘Gettin’ Havin’ & Holdin’, Brit-funk on the thrilling ‘Sex’ and hip hop in the ‘rap-acious’ wordplay of ‘Jacques Derrida’ and awesome coda of ‘Lions After Slumber’. It was funny too. “I was like an industry / Depressed and in decline”, Green deadpans on ‘Jacques Derrida’, while on ‘Gettin’ Havin’ & Holdin’ he even manages to spin a joke out of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, but you had to be there. 

Whatever its brilliance, its own lack of success is built in. It’s late. It would’ve changed the world a year earlier. By 1984, Green understood where the hit potential went – ‘Faithless’ was “too slow”, ‘Asylums’ and ‘Jacques Derrida’ “scrappy”, ‘The “Sweetest Girl”’ “too long”. He had better ideas now. Other artists could pick over the remains: Spandau Ballet’s sax-fuelled ‘True’ doesn’t happen without it, for better or worse; Culture Club had already fed off its dub-pop mellow before its belated release; Mick Hucknall, Sade, Working Week, early 80s soul / jazz acts with edge might spot the route from ersatz to the real thing.

The real thing for Green was ultra-delineated pop, the frictionless dazzle and hits of Cupid & Psyche 85 he hadn’t achieved with the Camden squat collective, but could with New Yorkers David Gamson and Fred Maher, and celebrated producer Arif Mardin. It opened the doors he’d sketched in his mind, back when he’d absorbed Aretha and Chic, the Cupid sonics audibly bleeding into R&B hits from Janet Jackson, Paula Abdul and Alexander O’Neal, while his ‘Perfect Way’ was faithfully covered by Miles Davis, and he gave Chaka Khan ‘Love Of A Lifetime’, a Scritti single in all but name.

In short, everything he’d shot for – before it freaked him out, he ran away, and took the long, heroically unprolific road back to Rough Trade and semi-obscurity. Don’t come to this reissue expecting a hitherto unguessed hoard of unreleased tracks. Can you imagine Green having vaults? One synth sound from 1989 that didn’t feel quite right so he cogitated over it and a pint of Guinness for another 10 years. What you get is a deep, crisp remastering of the nine tracks, along with that bee that’s come and gone from various versions, now back on the LP sleeve, embossed and deluxe. It’s the concise manifesto from a perfect pop writer who would come good on his promises later.

Songs To Remember is out now via Rough Trade