"You could say that the songs on Scritti Politti's Cupid & Psyche '85 are informed by Robert Rauschenberg. You could say they interrogate the very creative act that yielded them. You could say that they rebel against the notion of private language in abstract art, taking the position that meaning can only be constructed in terms that have been agreed upon implicitly or explicitly by artist and audience alike."
"You could say Cupid & Psyche '85 was an effort to consolidate an audience large enough to recoup the $500,000 advance that funded it, an audience that included both the teenyboppers who would buy the singles and older connoisseurs who would shell out for the LP. You could say that Green Gartside's indomitable tendency toward self-critical reflexiveness places him in danger of being a contrived performer,"
Cupid & Psyche '85 channels postmodern aesthetics and pop production into a gleaming, mechanized sound that privileges rhythm and groove. The songs draw on visual-art influence and interrogate creative acts while rejecting private, solipsistic language in favor of shared meaning between artist and audience. The album pursued both chart singles and LP sales to recoup a large advance, combining teen appeal with connoisseur targets. Green Gartside's self-critical reflexiveness risks contrivance even as it undermines the primacy of gut-level emotion. The record is deliberately pleasurable yet unsettling, addressing pop's ties to language, sex, power, and politics, and it opens with a distinctly white pop-reggae track.
Read at Pitchfork
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]