At the time of its release,
Too Much Pressure was relegated to second-class status behind the debut records by
Madness and
the Specials. Now it's easy to see that this record was the equal to
the Specials record, and (this will be widely disputed) better than the first (and second)
Madness records.
Pauline Black is the key and she makes songs like "On My Radio" and the title track classic chunks of Caribbean-influenced pop rather than mere stylistic mimicry. Much better than the weak second record,
Celebrate the Bullet, or the 1989 anthology,
Selected Selecter Selections.