. It was the fourth single from the group's second album Temple of Low Men
.
The song contains a solo by guitarist Richard Thompson.
A live version of the song later appeared on Crowded House's Special Edition Live Album that accompanied selected copies of the group's greatest hits compilation Recurring Dream. This performance goes over 6 minutes long because the group lost the beat, had to stop, made jokes about how they wouldn't remember the incident in the next 5 minutes and to compensate, Neil Finn
started improvising lyrics.
It was also performed at the group's farewell concert Farewell to the World
.
"Sister Madly" is said to be about Neil Finn waking up to find his sister having nightmares.
This song was featured in the movie The Sum of Us
with Australian actor Russell Crowe
as he is jogging at the beginning of the film.
All songs by Neil Finn
except "Something So Strong
" by Finn and Mitchell Froom
.
Released in UK.
- "Sister Madly" – 2:52
- "Mansion in the Slums" – 3:46
- "Something So Strong" (live at King Biscuit Flower Hour, The Trocadero, Philadelphia, 24 March 1987)
"Sister Madly" is the first Crowded House single that never entered into any chart internationally.
Admiration for a quality or an art can be so strong that it deters us from striving to possess it.
It is the quality of the moment, not the number of days, or events, or of actors, that imports.
It’s the quality of the ordinary, the straight, the square, that accounts for the great stability and success of our nation. It’s a quality to be proud of. But it’s a quality that many people seem to have neglected.
Much of what passes for quality on British television is no more than a reflection of the narrow elite which controls it and has always thought that its tastes were synonymous with quality.
One cannot develop taste from what is of average quality but only from the very best.
One shining quality lends a lustre to another, or hides some glaring defect.
People of quality know everything without ever having learned anything.
So cheat your landlord if you can and must, but do not try to shortchange the Muse. It cannot be done. You can’t fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal.
Social improvement is attained more readily by a concern with the quality of results than with the purity of motives.
The measure of your quality as a public person, as a citizen, is the gap between what you do and what you say.