Greatest Hitz: The Best Of Sweet 1969-1978 BMG

Sweet… and sour.

Not to nitpick, but surely the title should be Greatezt Hitz? Attention to detail is important, as this writer discovered while on the road with Sweet in Germany in the mid-70s. Frontman Brian Connolly’s white satin bell bottoms arrived back from the drycleaner draped over a crude metal clothes hanger, creating impossible-to-remove creases in the kneecap area. Connolly was apoplectic with rage, and rightly so. It was a proper rock’n’roll disgrace.

Attention to detail is also important while researching Sweet’s back catalogue in order to put together this compilation of past glitter-cheeked glories. But first things first. Greatest Hitz is available in two formats: three-CD digisleeve, and two-LP transparent coloured vinyl with, bizarrely, one disc being violet and one pink. The CD package is the one you want because it contains tons more tracks. Yet they are not ordered chronologically, so one can be listening to the storming Set Me Free one minute and the throwaway Lollipop Man the next. Presumably the idea is to accentuate the difference between the ‘bubblegum’ Sweet, as mentored by hitmakers Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman, and the ‘rockist’ direction the band favoured and which ultimately held sway.

(As an aside, one cannot help but feel that ChinniChap were messing with adolescent minds back in the day. Alright, we’re not exactly talking backwards satanic messages, but burning questions remain. Such as why wouldn’t Little Willy go home? Why did Poppa Joe render people unconscious with his coconut rum? Were those goings-on inside the wigwam as steamy as one suspects?)