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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
Entertainment
Mark Seymour

Mark Seymour: Sweet Thing by Van Morrison is the most perfect song of all time

Mark Seymour and Van Morrison
‘I felt her kisses and first wrote of love,’ Australian singer-songwriter Mark Seymour says of his memories of falling for a woman 37 years ago and listening to Sweet Thing by Van Morrison on repeat. Composite: Getty Images

The song arrives wholly unexpected as I crawl through the snarl of peak-hour traffic in a smart car connected to every passing tower. Spotify will do that. You punch in “British folk rock pop” and get Van Morrison’s Sweet Thing.

A rush of memory and I’m gone. Suddenly it’s 1986 and I’m driving the Pacific Highway with her, somewhere south of Lennox Head, in a 58 Studebaker coupé, top down, the smell of wood smoke, clifftop visions of the great South Pacific pearl and a roadside kiss, lost in the arms of a beautiful girl …

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