Album of the Day

Fine Young Cannibals had talent to burn - guitarist Andy Cox and multi-instrumentalist David Steele were veterans of the English Beat, and frontman Roland Gift was a vocalist as distinctive as Sam Cooke or Al Green – and 1989's THE RAW AND THE COOKED shows the U.K. trio going out in style. The second and final FYC studio album neatly balances such retro-soul numbers as “Good Thing” and such Prince-influenced dance cuts as “She Drives Me Crazy.” Both of those tracks became No.1 hits, and the remaining songs (all original except for a convincing cover of Buzzcocks' “Ever Fallen In Love”) are also single-worthy. A double-Platinum smash, THE RAW AND THE COOKED remains among the most listenable albums of the 1980s.