Pink Floyd
The Final Cut
The Final Cut: the 1983 Village Voice pan and the album's later reputation
Released in the UK on 21 March 1983 through Harvest and Columbia. A contemporary hostile review, alongside chart results from the US, the UK and the Netherlands with their dates.
The verdict at the time
Christgau wrote that The Final Cut does not reward close listening and carries 'the weight of years of self-pity behind it'; he awarded the album a C+ in his Consumer Guide column in The Village Voice on 28 June 1983. That verdict belongs to Christgau and The Village Voice, not to Echo Mandala.
Chart peaks
European positions are listed by country. Later chart entries are labelled separately.
Sources & context
Robert Christgau's Consumer Guide in The Village Voice (28 June 1983) dismissed The Final Cut as self-pitying and unrewarding, awarding it a C+. Retrospective pieces by Stylus Magazine (2003) and The Quietus (2013) later defended it as a tremendous but flawed album, and its reputation has steadied in the years after Pink Floyd's split. One critic's opinion; release and chart facts are sourced separately.
