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The Sweetest Girl

"The "Sweetest Girl""
The Sweetest Girl.jpg
Single by Scritti Politti
from the album Songs to Remember
B-side "Lions after Slumber" (UK, US, Germany)
"Confidence" (France, Japan)
Released 1981
Format
Genre Synthpop
Length

4:37 (single version)

6:18 (album version)
Label Rough Trade
Writer(s) Green Gartside
Producer(s)
Scritti Politti singles chronology
"4 A-Sides"
(1979)
"The "Sweetest Girl""
(1981)
"Faithless"
(1982)
"Sweetest Girl"
Sweetest Girl.jpg
Single by Madness
from the album Mad Not Mad
B-side "Jennie (A Portrait Of)"
Released 10 February 1986
Format
Genre Pop
Length 4:20 (single version)
5:46 (album version)
7:01 (dub mix)
6:34 (extended mix)
Label Zarjazz
Writer(s) Green Gartside
Producer(s) Clive Langer
Alan Winstanley
Madness singles chronology
"Uncle Sam"
(1985)
"Sweetest Girl"
(1986)
"(Waiting For) The Ghost Train"
(1986)

4:37 (single version)

"The “Sweetest Girl”" (sic) is a song written by Green Gartside. It was originally performed by Gartside's band Scritti Politti, and released in 1981 as a single. The single peaked at number 64 in the UK Singles Chart. The piano is played by Robert Wyatt.

The song became a marginally bigger hit 5 years later, when covered by Madness. Madness' version of the song reached #35 in the UK and #29 in Ireland in early 1986. Madness changed the title of the song slightly, losing both the definite article and the quotation marks around the last two words in "The “Sweetest Girl”", thereby rendering it as "Sweetest Girl"

The B-side, "Lions After Slumber" takes its title and quotes, in its final lines, from the 1819 political poem The Masque of Anarchy by Percy Bysshe Shelley.

The cover of the song by ska-pop band Madness was included on their 1985 album Mad Not Mad and released as a single the following year. The song spent 6 weeks in British charts peaking at number 35.

The song video was featured in the 1986 BBC Omnibus documentary Video Jukebox.


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