Released on 10 June 1985 "Cupid & Psyche '85" was the second album by the British band Scritti Politti, the album achieved commercial success thanks to its art-pop style and production, where the lyrics reflected concerns about language issues and politics, of course. It remains the group's most successful album to this day, spawning five singles. As if that weren't enough, "Perfect Way" became a hit in the United States, reaching No. 11 on the Billboard charts. The album spawned five singles "Wood Beez (Pray Like Aretha Franklin)", "Absolute", "Hypnotize", "The Word Girl", & "Perfect Way".
The album had already been in the making since their 1982 debut. At the time, he expressed his frustration at being with a label like Rough Trade, which couldn't financially support him so he could make the album he wanted. He began talks with other labels. He also distanced himself from the Marxist collective he came from, and little by little, Green became lonely, as many of the members left during the production or at the end of the album. By 1983, Greene traveled to New York and met with several people, resulting in the recordings of "Small Talk" and "L Is For Lover." The first made it onto the album, but the second didn't for legal reasons with Rough Trade. Despite everything, Greene stayed in New York with his new musical partners and, with the help of his manager, the matter with Rough Trade was resolved and negotiations with Virgin began.
Meanwhile, the band recorded three more songs, "Wood Beez (Pray Like Aretha Franklin)", "Absolute," and "Hypnotize," which would become singles later on the album. They also added elements of sampling and sequencing, something that no other pop album had incorporated until that time. The first to be released was "Wood Beez (Pray Like Aretha Franklin)" a complicated theme in the matter of what pop is, in terms of its relationship with language, power and politics, then would come songs like "Absolute" and "Hypnotize" and after a gap of six months they released the reggae pop song "The Word Girl", which becomes their biggest hit in the UK, and thanks to these elements that Scritt Politti achieved massive success, despite Greene's lyrics that were often dealing with worries with the contradiction becoming more distant from a person's reality, or things like that, although Greene himself described the record in this way putting the Cupid part as the most romantic and Psyche as the reconciling part and with just the fact of placing 85 the year it was released as something perfectly brilliant, making the record something horribly sensitive.
The reviews were good and often catalogued the album as not the sweetest thing but almost close to it, praising Greene's composition and sensibility, and that his guerrilla and Marxist influences were over once and for all, without a doubt the album was considered a fine pop, intelligent, sweet but not cloying, rich, seductive, durable, exotic, and exciting, although the excitement would not last long as it usually happens with this type of albums, and for the next album things would not be the same, despite everything, Greene earned an unexpected success in the United States pointing out the novel direction that the band was taking, with a great header, a kind of piece of art, immaculately constructed and put on par with the best synth pop.
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