Confessions of a Pop Group is the fourth full-length studio album by English sophisti-pop band the Style Council, released 20 June 1988 by Polydor.

With no hit singles and an unusual promotional strategy, Confessions was a relative commercial failure for the band, reaching only number 15 on the UK Albums Chart.

A key track from the album, "It's A Very Deep Sea," was featured when a reunited Style Council played the song at the end of a 2019 documentary about their work.

[7] Long time guest vocalist Dee C. Lee, who was pregnant with Weller's child and would soon become his wife, became an official member prior to the recording of the album,[8] whereas drummer Steve White left the band to pursue a career with saxophonist Alan Barnes as The Jazz Renegades, who performed hard bop and Afro-Latin music.

"[8] After his experiences working on The Cost of Loving, Weller was more confident with Confessions and told Jezar about things he wanted to try out for the first time, including classical concert harp on the song "The Gardener of Eden" and a capella vocals reminiscent of a barber shop quartet on "The Story of Someone's Shoe".

"[10] Jezar created a digital multitrack recorder setup using 48 tracks set across two separate 24-track Sony 3324 machines, giving him and the band the technical capability to try several things in the sessions they had not before.

Using two 24-track machines rather than one 48-track machine allowed the band to use more production techniques on the album, including, in Jezar's recollection, "making perfect backup copies of projects, no cross-talk limitations (no need to plan what was recorded adjacent to a timecode track), being able to copy tracks further forward or further backwards in time (to change the musical 'feel'), back-up of multiple tracks (i.e. vocals) after you'd bounced or composited them down to free-up space, spinning-in (copy and paste) of one-off riffs and musical sections into other parts of a song, non destructive editing of multitracks [and] immensely complex, overlapping multitrack edits.

I was able to go through all of the tracks on all of the songs and erase small annoyances that previously I didn't have the precision to do - such as electrical pops in the middle of notes, or the squeaking of the piano stool.

[15] James Masterton wrote it was the band's most diverse album, presenting an "at times random blend" of progressive rock, avant-garde and synthpop music.

"[11] Smash Hits magazine described the album as combining "dious, mannered 'soul' style music" with tongue-in-cheek indulgent parts and "the odd classic song.

"[21] Reed wrote that, like The Cost of Loving, Confessions "betrayed a debt to contemporary US R&B (from the work of million-selling producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis to indie funk like Osiris' 'War on the Bullshit').

[24][25] Trouser Press felt the album contained Weller's "most dispirited lyrics," feeling his "general disgust at everything in sight is vitriolic and undisguised.

Uncut felt this side of the album "features sublime instrumental passages worthy of Satie, Bacharach or French soundtrack composer Francis Lai.

"[11] The Trouser Press Music Guide called this section a "collection of jazzy songs with fancy vocal arrangements,"[24] while Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic made note of the "jazz-pop fusions" that feature on this side.

[26] The song's "emotionally explicit lyric" is, in the words of Dylan Jones, "unnervingly at odds with the lush arrangement, much in the vein of Elvis Costello.

Reed described the piece as "a cinematic mix of moody, quasi-classical piano interludes", reminiscent of Michael Nyman, "between intelligent lyrics which cast a weary eye over the world's ecological ravages.

"[21][12] The song contained "clicking" house beats atop a lush soul production which was described by Masterton as "like a record out of its time,"[12] and the vocals are drowned by the horns and drums.

[8] "Confessions 1, 2 & 3" features trombone work from Chris Lawrence and a crowd applause that was described by Lester as "especially poignant, considering the speed with which the Council's fans were deserting them.

"[11] The album finishes with the title track, "Confessions of a Pop Group", a nine-minute funk track which, according to Reed, "reinvented" One Nation Under a Groove by Funkadelic, but instead replacing that album's optimism with a cynical, vindictive outlook of modern England in the aftermath of the Conservative Party's victory at the 1987 general election,[21] with one commentator highlighting the lyrics "Cheap and tacky bullshit land/Told when to sit don't know where you stand/Too busy recreating the past/To live in the future.

"[24] Reed referred to the song as a "grown-up" version of the Style Council's 1983 single "Money-Go-Round,"[21] while Trouser Press noted a stylistic similarity between the track and Tears for Fears' The Seeds of Love, released the following year.

After the failure of The Cost of Loving, they needed Paul to deliver a commercial album full of pop hits, and on hearing this they must have reached for the valium."

An infamous review from Allan Jones of Melody Maker did not discuss the album directly, instead deriding Weller as "the slow kid in the class," prompting angry fans to write in.

[20] Chris Mugan of The Independent felt the band "disappeared up its own fundament on a couple of jazzy 'suites'," whereas a favourable review from Record Mirror read: "It really is an exceptional piece of pop music for the times we inhabit.

Staci Bonner of Spin wrote that "a Style Council album is like a quick diagnosis of society, chastising those who abandon their idealism, but always ending on a positive note.

"[25] Martin C. Strong, in The Great Rock Discography, felt the album was "lacking in focus, its string arrangements and classical pretensions seeing The Style Council sinking in a mire of self-indulgence.

"[20] In the book The Eighties: One Day, One Decade, journalist Dylan Jones described Confessions of a Pop Group as the pinnacle of the band's career, and that Weller's only problem "was convincing other people that this was the case.

"[7] Liberal politics magazine the New Statesman found the album to provide proof that left-leaning bands in Britain have "at last grasped the nettle" and begun using a subversive "counter-language.

"[35] Reflecting on the album, John Reed felt the album coincided with the passing of political idealism within pop music, and captured the period perfectly, writing: "As the country entered a major recession, and a year on from the failed Red Wedge initiative, Weller painted a vivid picture of a bleak, hopeless world, his previous idealism replaced by pessimism and personal regrets of hollow one-night stands, of fraught relationships and feelings of guilt and shame.

"[36] Lewis wrote in Uncut that because the album made little effort to satisfy Weller loyalists, who were "horrified by the use of the Swingle Singers and the pastiches of Chick Corea, the Beach Boys and Erik Satie," they gave their copies to charity shops.

Discs, initially featuring a more organic, rootsier sound mixing influences of soul music and rock group Traffic,[41] pushing him away from the ambitions of the Style Council.