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The original version of this track, as released by Rough Trade, was almost their first ever Top 75 hit. Oddly, it didn't initially make the cut for their major-label comeback album Gold Mother, which brought them their first Top 40 hits. Eventually, though, commercial logic prevailed and the re-recording that appears here and on innumerable other compilations spend three weeks behind only Chesney Hawkes. Ultimately it was added to the album too, although it displaced another song, which is always an annoying thing for record companies to do.
The hit version of 'Sit Down' is one of those tracks that's so deeply familiar I find it hard to get purchase on it and get a fresh reaction, or any reaction at all for that matter. They're not a group I ever mustered much affection for; they've never shrugged off the sense of a poor man's U2 for me. I can appreciate this song a bit more as an adult than I could back in 1991, although I'm not sure whether realising that the lyric I'd heard as "those who find themselves religious" is actually "those who find themselves ridiculous" constitutes an improvement though. Even though there's japery in James, a lot of the time I still find them a bit self-important.
In all honesty though, even if I was ever going to like this song I'd be far too tired of it now.
Also appearing on: Now 21, 26, 36, 37, 41, 43
Available on: Epic
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