Recording

Sweet Mother
Prince Nico Mbarga

Independently chosen for3 of our lists. Here is what each of them said.

Released

1976

Label

Rogers All Stars

On

Highlife, 1976, and Sung to Someone

Updated

2026-08-30

1. 03

   Ranked No. 3 in 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.

2. ·

   Picked by 1976

   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.

3. ·

   Picked by 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.