Scritti Politti 'The Word Girl'

Chart Peak: 6

LiveVideo

Apologies for the break in transmission, I wasn't feeling too well and thought I should be in full command of my faculties to give this track a sporting chance.

It's a slighty oddity that Scritti's biggest UK hit seems to be about the only one not on YouTube at time of writing (should you be reading this in the future, you can always try your own search).

I'm sure I've said this before, but I never really know what to make of most of Green's work, which it's often easier to be impressed than moved by. There's some clever tricksiness in this song, with the pseudo-Biblical "How your flesh and blood became the word" - this title is apparently to be parsed as "the word 'girl'" rather than being about a word-girl - and the production is so spotless you could eat your dinner off it. But for all the influence of soul and reggae music, the finished article comes over as a bit more of an essay than a pop song. Even though I can appreciate it more fully than I did when I was only seven, I find myself enjoying it less, today at least.

Also appearing on: Now 12, 19
Available on: Cupid and Psyche '85

Scritti Politti 'Oh Patti (Don't Feel Sorry For Loverboy)'

Chart Peak: 13

YouTube

There aren't many acts who give me such mixed feelings as Scritti Politti, and not only because the name is so difficult to type. I recall liking the hits when I was a child, although at the peak of his/their success in the mid-eighties I was young enough to like pretty much anything with a catchy tune. Listening back as an adult, I'm sometimes impressed by the clean production (and the reinvention from their early work, which I obviously wasn't aware of at the time) and the lyrics that seem clever even if I don't always understand them: at other times it's this very sense of self-conscious cleverness that repels me, and I've never really known what I think of Green's voice.

After three years' silence, 'Oh Patti' was the lead single from the third album Provision, and it lacks the reggae sound of some of the hits from Cupid & Psyche. Instead the focus is very much on the smoothness, and the overall effect is not dissimilar to Prefab Sprout (whom I like but sometimes go through phases of not being able to listen to) on helium. As the sleevenote points out, this track is also notable for the trumpet solo by jazz legend Miles Davis, who'd apparently been a fan of Scritti's only major US hit, 'Perfect Way'. Even as I struggle to form an opinion on this myself, it's obvious why this was a hit, but not totally surprising that the public seemed to be more or less sated by now: this was the (admittedly not very prolific) act's last hit to come from an album, although the collaboration with Shabba Ranx on an odd cover of a Beatles flipside did make for one last Top 20 success.

One little detail I don't remember at all from the time is the slightly cheeky extra snare beat at the very end of the track, which seems to go some way to undercut the polish of the preceding four minutes. I suspect it was faded out by many a DJ back then, but in this context it neatly presages the next track.

Also appearing on: Now 5, 19
Available on: Provision