Flowers of Romance | |
Cover: | PiL Flowers of Romance single.jpg |
Type: | single |
Artist: | Public Image Ltd |
Album: | The Flowers of Romance |
B-Side: | Home Is Where the Heart Is |
Released: | 27 March 1981 (UK) |
Length: | 2:50 |
Label: | Virgin VS 397 |
Prev Title: | Memories |
Prev Year: | 1979 |
Next Title: | This Is Not a Love Song |
Next Year: | 1983 |
"Flowers of Romance" is a song by Public Image Ltd. It reached number twenty four on the UK Singles Chart. The 12" extended version of the song is actually two songs counted as one track: the single version of the song followed by an instrumental version of it.
"Listening to that again reminded me of coming out of jail [after being arrested for alleged assault in 1980]," John Lydon told Select in 1990. "That's when I recorded it. I left Dublin and went straight into the studio for two weeks solid: slept there, did everything myself, practically. No band; couldn't find Keith; more or less had to engineer the bloody thing myself cos the engineer there ran out going, 'That's impossible – you can't do that!' I did it. That particular song, I timed how long it would take me to turn the tape on, run into the studio and turn it all off. I had to rehearse that about 20 bloody times before I got it right!"[1]
Writing in 2002, writer Garry Mulholland described the song as "the strangest chart record of the last 25 years, maybe ever."[2]
NME ranked it the 41st best single of the year.