The Best of Sweet

Album Review

Recollections of Britain's arch-glam gods generally inspire two theories of their producers, Mike Chapman and his partner, Nicky Chinn. Either they knew just what they were doing and calculated accordingly, or blindly hit pay dirt, following toothless early singles like "Funny Funny" (none of which grace this disc). By this reckoning, Sweet was a '70s-era pinup band or a closeted hard rock quartet who only got their due after breaking the Chapman/Chinn combination. Actually, the truth lies in between; once the producers realized that fans wanted a tougher sound, they only needed the right song to burst the floodgates open, and stardom would beckon. That song turned out to be "Little Willy," which drew inspiration from late vocalist Brian Connolly's never-ending nightclubbing and sparked a remarkable run of 14 hit singles, including 11 that topped the British charts. Most of them are here, including "Wig Wam Bam," "Blockbuster," and the oft-covered "Ballroom Blitz," which provided a vivid, legitimate soundtrack to listeners' daily dreams and frustrations. The middle period following Chapman and Chinn's 1975 departure is well-represented by "The Lies in Your Eyes," the classic backhanded groupie putdown "Fox on the Run," "The 6-Teens," and the oft-covered "Action," a Top 20 U.S. hit in 1976. By then, the group's meld of high harmonies to a bullish, if somewhat slick, hard rock attack was well-established, extending Sweet's reach beyond their die-hard British turf. The group's last real Top Ten hit, 1978's "Love Is Like Oxygen," showed them toning down the decibels for lusher, more pop-oriented territory, as did "Mother Earth," an acoustic-based winner from Cut Above the Rest, the underrated 1979 album recorded following Connolly's departure for an unsuccessful solo career. The story essentially ended afterward, though the group kept recording into the '80s, while the '90s saw Connolly and Scott lead dueling versions of the band, with themselves being the only original member. This compilation does manage the tricky task of balancing hits and lesser-known songs, so it's a decent affair, but newcomers might still want to seek out Desolation Boulevard (1975) and Give Us a Wink, which remain the group's heaviest albums.