On my first day at sixth form college, I was asked by a fellow student what was the most recent record I had bought. My answer, ‘Songs to Remember’ by Scritti Politti, brought laughter. His dismal was based on nothing more than not having heard of the record, therefore it must be rubbish. It proved a useful introduction to the joys of ploughing my own musical furrow and the bemusement it caused in the “normal” world. By the standards of what I have written about over the ensuing years, it does not seem especially obscure. Singles from the album were played regularly by Kid Jensen and John Peel on nighttime Radio One shows and ‘Songs to Remember’ peaked at number 12 in the national album charts.
Admittedly, Scritti Politti is an unusual moniker but I was used to Peel reeling off a list of bizarre names at the beginning of his programme. I was unfamiliar, though, with Antonio Gramsci and it was a long time before I realised that a bastardised adaptation of his title ‘political writings’ was the basis for the band’s name. Equally, it was only when Rough Trade released a compilation of their early singles and EPs in 2005 that I fully recognised what a departure ‘Songs to Remember’ represented from their original scrappy agit-prop roots. So, what attracted me to the album upon its release in September 1982? As always, the music was the prime consideration. It was a lush concoction of pop, jazz, soul and lovers rock, all topped off with Green Gartside’s gorgeously honeyed vocals. However, underneath the smooth surface, there appeared to be some destabilisation going on. The rhythms went off occasionally in unexpected directions and the lyrics were intriguing. Who on earth was Jacques Derrida I wondered? What were these Asylums in Jerusalem? Being a devotee of acts like The Teardrop Explodes and Echo and the Bunnymen, I was partial to some braggadocio and ‘Songs to Remember’ was certainly a boastful title.
This preamble is inspired by a remastered version of ‘Songs to Remember’ being issued. Unlike a lot of reissues, it does not coincide with an anniversary (unless 43 years, 7 months and 7 days count), contain any additional tracks or additional packaging. However, there is never a bad time to revisit perfection. It is, though, difficult to tell how much difference the remastering has made as comparing listening to a much-played LP on a good stereo system with hearing the remaster through laptop speakers is not a like-for-like comparison but the new version does sound clear and pristine.
‘Asylums in Jerusalem’ still makes for a fantastic opening, a piece of dashing electro pop reggae peppered with the soulful female backing vocals that are a regular pleasure of the album and which elevates Gartside’s sweet voice. At the time, I interpreted it as a reference to geopolitical turmoil in the Middle East (some things do not change) but it transpires that the song was inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche’s writings about the madhouses built around ancient Jerusalem to house the religious fanatics claiming to be prophets in the wake of Jesus’s arrival. It would also be easy to read autobiographical fears into lines like “with his hammer and his popsicle / they put him in a hospital for good” as the song followed a lengthy period of recuperation for Gartside following a panic attack after a gig.
‘A Slow Soul’ is a strikingly surprising choice as the second track. As the title suggests, it is slow and soulful as well as brooding. Moody saxophone runs through the track which seems to be one of Gartside’s more straight-forward examinations of love and desire, albeit riddled with sickness and sadness. Named after the poststructuralist philosopher, ‘Jacques Derrida’ is a song of two halves: initially a straight-forward rhythm guitar led pop song, it transforms into an electro track featuring a Gartside rap. While he has described the song as being about the contradictions within the politics of desire, both reactionary and leftist, in 1982 I was struck by the lines, “to err is to be human / to forgive is too divine / I was like an industry / depressed and in decline.” The song was released during the major post-war economic recession where the 16-year-old me assumed he would never have a job so those words chimed.
Decorated by the funkiest bassline and featuring an emotive sax solo, ‘Lions After Slumber’ may hold a record for using the word “my” more than any other song, appearing virtually every other word. Its structure only changes with the final line, “like lions after slumber in unvanquishable number” taken from Shelley’s 1819 poem, ‘The Mask of Anarchy’ about the Peterloo Massacre. The most maximalist track on the record, ‘Faithless’ brings gospel vocals to the fore, mixing it with Gartside’s treacly voice, vocoder and bass punctuation in an exhilarating fashion. While in the cloak of a troubled love song, Gartside described it as being about how living without faith brings both happiness and sadness.
Raising the bpm to fever pitch, ‘Sex’ is a storming piece of electro pop but lines such as “amoral disarmament, baby” and “just cut that chi-chi ‘n’ machismo” suggest that it is more than a straight-forward celebration of gratification. Easing back, the double bass led ‘Rock-a-boy Blue’ also has saxophone crawling all over it. It portrays sophistication and a critique of success, “don’t they want to make the money / don’t they want to be the Beatles / things ain’t clear they’re just transparent / trick of the trade is to make them apparent-ly.” The song ends with a double bass solo which felt wonderfully out of time in a post-punk and new romantic era. On the lover’s rock inflected ‘Getting’ Havin’ & Holdin’’, conventional portrayals of romance are questioned from the opening lines, “when a man loves a woman / he is happy, maybe.” It is also the only song I know of with a Wittgenstein joke, “true like the Tractatus” (in his theory of language, he stated that the concept of “truth” did not exist.)
‘Songs to Remember’ ends with the tune that was my introduction to Scritti Politti, ‘The Sweetest Girl’. Featuring Robert Wyatt on keyboard, its synthesised percussion is an eery underpinning to a melodically rich song. Again, it subverts the conventions of a pop song, exposing how the male idealised version of the perfect girl is a myth and appears to be showing where Gartside’s sympathies lay with the lines, “politics is prior to / the vagaries of science / she left because she understood / the value of defiance.” While I viewed it as a perfect pop song, it may have been too dense for mainstream tastes and only dented the Top Forty later when it was covered in 1986 by Madness.
If ever a record justified its confident title, it is ‘Songs to Remember.’ Even when my tastes veered towards the noisy and discordant later in the 1980s and through the 1990s, it was still a record that I enjoyed revisiting regularly. Over four decades later, it remains as thrilling as any new music. These were not just songs to remember but songs that have proved to be a regular companion through life.
Scritti Politti: Songs to Remember – Out 10 April 2026 (Rough Trade)
I was editor of the long-running fanzine, Plane Truth, and have subsequently written for a number of publications. While the zine was known for championing the most angular independent sounds, performing in recent years with a community samba percussion band helped to broaden my tastes so that in 2021 I am far more likely to be celebrating an eclectic mix of sounds and enthusing about Made Kuti, Anthony Joseph, Little Simz and the Soul Jazz Cuban compilations as well as Pom Poko and Richard Dawson.
