Reception
| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic | |
| BBC Music | (very favourable) |
| The Daily Vault | (A) |
| George Starostin | |
| Robert Christgau | B |
| Rolling Stone | (mixed) |
| The Rolling Stone Album Guide | |
| SputnikMusic | |
Contemporary reviews for the album were mixed. Rolling Stone praised the band for attempting something utterly different amidst "a stagnant pop scene", but criticized the album's lyrics for their bad puns, their overuse of specifically British pop culture references, and their sometimes overtly silly rhymes. Despite additional complaints with some musical passages, they offered that the album "merits some recognition".
Retrospective reviews have been considerably more favorable. Allmusic, BBC Music, and The Daily Vault all commented that the album returned to the whimsical eccentricity of Nursery Cryme while retaining the hard rock intensity and pessimism of Foxtrot, combining the best of both elements to make Genesis's best album up to that point. The album's focus on storytelling was particularly applauded, and while The Daily Vault criticized the track "More Fool Me" as being jarringly out-of-place, they offered special praise for Tony Banks's distinctive keyboard work throughout Selling England by the Pound. Even Robert Christgau, who thoroughly panned most of Genesis's albums, admitted that the songs "Firth of Fifth" and "The Battle of Epping Forest" have "a complexity of tone that's pretty rare in any kind of art", though he summarized the rest of the album saying "sounds as snooty as usual."
In 2012, the album ranked seventh in Rolling Stone's "Readers' Poll: Your Favorite Prog Rock Albums of All Time". It was also included in IGN's list "10 Classic Prog Rock Albums" in 2008.
Read more about this topic: Selling England By The Pound
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