| "Flowers of Romance" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | ||||
| Single by Public Image Ltd | ||||
| from the album The Flowers of Romance | ||||
| B-side | "Home Is Where the Heart Is" | |||
| Released | 27 March 1981 (UK) | |||
| Genre | ||||
| Length | 2:50 | |||
| Label | Virgin VS 397 | |||
| Songwriter(s) | John Lydon and Keith Levene | |||
| Producer(s) | ||||
| Public Image Ltd singles chronology | ||||
| ||||
"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.[citation needed]
