Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
Allmusic
Robert Christgau	B link
Melody Maker	very favourable
Mojo	favourable (2001 reissue)
NME	favourable
Q	(2001 reissue)
Smash Hits	7½/10

Songs to Remember is the debut album by the British pop group Scritti Politti. The album's recording had to be delayed for nine months due to frontman Green Gartside's collapse and illness, and then after completion its release was delayed for a further year at the band's request. It was eventually released on Rough Trade Records on 3 September 1982, reaching number 12 on the UK Albums Chart. The album was heavily influenced by disco, reggae, and soul music, and marked the beginning of Scritti Politti's move from their underground DIY post-punk sound towards commercial pop music.

British music magazine Record Mirror placed it at number 14 in their critics' list of the best albums of the 1980s, and it was included in journalist Garry Mulholland's book Fear of Music: The 261 Greatest Albums Since Punk and Disco where he described the record as "a unique and modestly epic fusion of pop, reggae, funk, soul, jazz and lyrics submerged in the deep end of political philosophy."

Having released a couple of early singles, Scritti Politti began planning their debut album in 1979, but the recording had to be delayed when Gartside collapsed after a gig supporting Gang of Four in Brighton in early 1980. Originally believed to be a heart attack, the cause of his collapse was eventually diagnosed as a panic attack, brought on by his chronic stage fright and his unhealthy lifestyle. Returning home to south Wales at his parents' insistence for a nine-month convalescence period, Gartside had plenty of time to think about the direction the band and their music were going in. During 1979 he had already become less interested in the independent music and punk scene and had started listening to and buying American funk and disco like Chic and the Jacksons, Stax soul like Aretha Franklin, and 1960s British beat music such as the Beatles' early records. Gartside came to the conclusion that "you don't have to be lobotomised in order to make pop music. It's a real passion to make it" and that making pop music didn't mean selling out punk's principles or dumbing down: "I think the politics of punk does survive. There are a whole lot [of] people who aren't happy to make pap but want to make pop. They understand that what sells means something. It finds a way into people's hearts in a way that independent music never did." He explained his reasons for abandoning the band's original "do-it-yourself" philosophy to Smash Hits in November 1981:

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