Customer Reviews
Still the best Madness CD to buy... - By: The Bada Bing, 03 Nov 2007 
Complete Madness contains the group's very best songs (Embarrassment, My Girl, It Must Be Love, Baggy Trousers, Grey Day etc) but what pushes it above other compilations (e.g. Divine Madness) is the inclusion of inspired album tracks & rarities such as Bed And Breakfast Man, Take It Or Leave It, Madness & In The City.
This album covers Madness' best work up to & including House Of Fun so there is plenty more to explore but this captures Madness at their creative peak. They were never quite this good again.
Everything about this album is special - the songs, the track sequencing, the packaging.
16 tracks. 47 or so minutes. A lifetime of enjoyment. Every home should have one.
Madness - simply amazing - By: the ger to the bil, 13 Dec 2006 well where do i start with madness!!!, everybody at some point will of boogied on down to a madness track!!, im 57 & everytime i hear a madness song i always get up & have a dance, all of there tunes are very infectuous,suggs is a real entertainer & his voice is so soulful,think of the white luther vandross.I would really be lost without all of my madness cd's, i challenge any one to not like this cd it really is quality!!! so go & get them baggy trousers & enter the house of fun....
This is the heavy heavy sound - By: Matthew Morgan, 19 Sep 2003 Imagine, if you will, a small boy of 10.
He isin a record shop for the first time, a very large & imposing record shop. He's a little intimidated but he holds his mother's hand tight & pulls her through the people until they find the exact record he wants.
He's heard lots of the songs before on the radio but it's Baggy Trousers that he really loves. Its very happy, & you can dance to it. The video is great & its somehow about school.
So they find the album - actually it was a tape - with seven gurning loons on the front & go home.
And then he listens to it on his walkman again & again & again. He loves this music until it isin his pores.
As a little boy there isn't really anything to compare this to - he is just discovering music (the next thing he buys is Lou Reed because he heard Walk on the Wild Sidein a movie he wasn't supposed to watch)
But as he grew older Madness stayed with him. The music didn't really mature as he did - it is still as wonderfully madcap & funny as it was all those years ago. The booming voices - One Step Beyonddddddddd - the parping horns - the ska (if only he'd know that word) rhythms - the silly lyrics (it took years to work out what House of Fun was all about).
There is no need to feel sad - listen to these early Madness songs - some of their best - probably most of their best. They were still holding on to their ska roots - but their pure pop selves were breaking through. For me it is a wonderful record full of more memories than almost any other (I still remember getting into a fight over whether Madness were better than Adam & the Ants).
Nothing more, nothing less, love is the best!
