# Prince Nico Mbarga — Sweet Mother

Prince Nico Mbarga’s Sweet Mother (1976) appears on 3 of our lists — Highlife, 1976, and Sung to Someone, highest at No. 3 in Highlife. Every verdict, in full.

- **Released:** 1976
- **Label:** Rogers All Stars
- **On:** Highlife, 1976, and Sung to Someone
- **Updated:** 2026-08-30
- **Artist:** [Prince Nico Mbarga](https://waxonia.com/artist/prince-nico-mbarga/)
- **Canonical page:** https://waxonia.com/track/prince-nico-mbarga--sweet-mother/

## What 3 lists say

### No. 3 in [Highlife](https://waxonia.com/genre/highlife/)

Reckoned to be the best-selling African single ever made. A pidgin-English song about a mother's love over a guitar line of total sweetness, and utterly unembarrassed by any of it.

### Picked by [1976](https://waxonia.com/theme/nineteen-seventy-six/)

Reportedly the biggest-selling African record ever made, in a year when the British charts had no idea it existed. Highlife at its most untroubled, and the exact opposite of the entry above from the same country in the same twelve months.

### Picked by [Sung to Someone](https://waxonia.com/theme/sung-to-someone/)

The criterion says one person addressing another. It does not say the other has to be a lover. One of the biggest-selling records ever made in Africa, and it is a grown man thanking his mother, directly, for the nights she did not sleep.

## Listen

[Search Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/search/Prince%20Nico%20Mbarga%20Sweet%20Mother) · [YouTube Music](https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=CWmecBppkOQ)

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