Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic
Encyclopedia of Popular Music
Los Angeles Times
Orlando Sentinel
Rolling Stone
The Rolling Stone Album Guide
Martin C. Strong	(8/10)
The Village Voice	A−

The Raw & the Cooked is the second and final studio album by British rock band Fine Young Cannibals, released in 1988. The title of the album was lifted from the book of the same name ("Le Cru et le Cuit" in French) by French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss. Four songs from the album first appeared in film soundtracks in the mid-1980s, three of which were soul tracks from the Tin Men film. The band had already recorded over half of the album by the time David Z came to produce the remainder. His work with the band, which resulted in dance-rock material, included studio experimentation.

The album is considered to be an eclectic, varied album, taking influences from numerous genres including Motown soul, rock, funk, British beat and pop. Released in 1988–89 on I.R.S. Records, The Raw & the Cooked was a major commercial success, selling over three million copies. Numerous singles were released from the album, including the two US number one singles "She Drives Me Crazy" and "Good Thing". The album was also critically acclaimed and Jo-Ann Greene of AllMusic called the album a masterpiece and one of the 1980s' most exciting albums. A remixed version of the album entitled The Raw & the Remix was released in 1990.

Multiple songs from The Raw & the Cooked debuted long before their release on the album; the band's cover of Buzzcocks' "Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn't've)" originally appeared on the soundtrack for the 1986 Jonathan Demme film Something Wild. Three other songs from the album—"Good Thing", "Tell Me What" and "As Hard As It Is"—first appeared in the 1987 film Tin Men, where the Fine Young Cannibals portrayed a band in a nightclub. These three songs have a retro-soul style consistent with the film's 1963 Baltimore setting. At this point, the band were beginning to move away from their "Sixties soul sound", but Tin Men director Barry Levinson persuaded the band to retain the sound on the songs. The band had already written and recorded enough songs for one half of the album between their contributions to the two films.

...
Wikipedia