Sweet

After recording Level Headed, an album that mostly forsaked their hard rock leanings for pure pop, longtime lead vocalist Brian Connolly left Sweet for good. The rest of the group decided to press on as a trio, combining their pop/rock sound with a variety of other musical styles in a bid to gain a more progressive image. The result was Cut Above the Rest, a bizarre combination of the hard-rocking pop that dominated classic Sweet singles with progressive flights of fancy in a 10cc/Electric Light Orchestra vein, plus a dash of lounge lizard-ish soft rock balladry thrown in to cover all the pop/rock bases…

The title sets itself up for one hell of a fall, and the ongoing need for a decent Sweet box set is never going to be assuaged by this. But it is what it says on the tin, a 37-strong collection that, OK, they're not all the "Best Glam Rock Songs Ever," but maybe a dozen of them are, and the remainder should at least be invited to the awards ceremony. A dizzying spin through the band's entire RCA catalog, a mass of A-sides, B-sides, album cuts and what-on-earth-were-they-thinking cuts jostle for your attention…

In some ways, the Sweet epitomized all the tacky hubris and garish silliness of the early '70s. Fusing bubblegum melodies with crunching, fuzzy guitars, the band looked a heavy metal band, but were as tame as any pop group. It was a dichotomy that served them well, as they racked up a number of hits in both the U.K. and the U.S. Most of those hits were written by Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman, a pair of British songwriters that had a way with silly, simple, and catchy hooks…

Reissued 1982 album. The bands last official LP with the Scott/ Tucker/ Priest line up contains a further 9 superbly played and brilliantly structured slices of quality Hard Rock.

After the international success of the self-produced "Fox on the Run," Sweet broke away from songwriters Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman in an attempt to shake their "pop puppets" and took a stab at conquering the hard rock album market. Sadly, a lot of their post-hit singles period output lacked the tight songwriting and hooks that made them famous, and this problem is in evidence on Off the Record…

This is the album every "sweet"fan has been looking for,you hear the rumour did brian sing on that one before he left the band well this album has all the answers!There is a nice introduction to the songs on this cd by the sweets guitarest "andy scott" explaining when and where they were recorded and reasons why they were not released at the time…

Having made their LP debut with half an album's worth of repackaged oldies, the Sweet then followed through with an entire disc of the things, drawing from both their own recent back catalog and that of songwriters Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman, to create a record of almost unholy pop pleasure…