Sugar Mice

Sugar Mice is a protest song about the effect of unemployment on relationships. A British worker emigrates to the United States for a job and leaves his family behind, then ends in despair drinking in a hotel bar in Milwaukee and blaming the government. Fish said he wrote it lying in a Holiday Inn bed, looking up at hearts that lovers had carved in the ceiling and feeling down after a bad phone call. The narrator says we are just sugar mice in the rain, which gives the song its title.

Released on 13 July 1987, it reached 22 in Britain, the band's eighth top 30 hit in a row, and charted in the Netherlands and West Germany. The B-side, Tux On, tells of a rising rock star who loses touch with reality and ends up abusing drugs. The 12-inch carried an extended version, and 3,000 copies of a five-inch CD single were sold only at concerts. At the Loreley concert in 1987 Fish dedicated the song to all the unemployed people in Europe. AllMusic's John Franck called it quite simply one of Marillion's best commercial singles ever.