Awesome Music:, "One Step Beyond", "Night Boat to Cairo" (from One Step Beyond Album), "Baggy Trousers", "Embarrassment" (from Absolutely), "Our House" (from The Rise & Fall), "House Of Fun", "It Must Be Love",... the list really goes on.
Their versions of "One Step Beyond" from One Step Beyond Album (a 1964 Prince Buster Ska tune) and "It Must Be Love" (a Top 20 UK hit for Singer-Songwriter Labi Siffre in 1971) are better known than the originals.
Same goes for their single "Sweetest Girl" which, while barely remembered by anyone but Madness fans, is still better remembered than the Scritti Politti original.
"Rockin' in A Flat" is an unreleased song by the group Bazooka Joe, of which Mike Barson's brother was a member for a while.
Funny Moments: The video for "Our House" features several shots of Lee Thompson, Chas Smash, Dan Woodgate, and Chris Foreman playing violins during the string passages in the song. Foreman is "playing" his violin with a toasting fork instead of a bow.
Misaimed Fandom: In their early days, they had a significant following among supporters of the National Front, possibly because they were the most prominent band in the 2 Tone scene to have an all-white lineup. That Madness, and the entire 2 Tone movement, stood for pretty much the exact opposite of the NF, was seemingly lost on them, and on some of the newspapers who covered the band's rise. It got to the point where they basically had to tell the skinhead part of the fan base to go and stick their fingers up their arses.
Signature Song: "Our House" from The Rise & Fall, though "One Step Beyond" is also a sort of Theme Tune for them (however, the latter failed to appear in the Jukebox Musical, which probably disqualify it from true Signature Song status).
Special Effect Failure: The "Night Boat to Cairo" video isn't striving for authenticity in the first place, but the illusion of being performed in front of a pyramid is completely shattered when the platform they're performing on starts wobbling, revealing more of the backdrop.
What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: The number of kids' TV programmes that have used "House of Fun"—which, remember, is a song about a sixteen-year-old attempting to buy his first condoms—as thematic music is ridiculous. Admittedly they usually only use the chorus, but still.
