Sweet About Me its own, rather than stiffly wearing its '60s influences like a pair of slightly-too-small cuban heeled boots [similar to that of Duffy]." Mark Reid of "The New Zealand Herald" described the track as "incredibly catchy". The song was classed as an obvious highlight on "Lessons to Be Learned" by Colin Polonowski of The Digital Fix. Andrew Cock of The Dwarf said that "Sweet About Me" is as catchy as ever and will continue to receive wide public acclaim. Cock noted, "At times this song seems so sweet it oozes honey, feeling deliberately boppy." Cilmi's vocal performance on the song was
Hit Me with Your Rhythm Stick three years earlier and it had just taken him all that time to realise their quality. Blockheads guitarist John Turnbull gives a different account, claiming the lyrics were written while on tour in America six months prior to the song's recording and that he was still adjusting in-studio. He said the line "it's nice to be a lunatic" was originally "it don't take arithmetic". Whilst researching his book "Ian Dury: The Definitive Biography", Will Birch discovered that Dury wrote the lyrics for "Hit Me with Your Rhythm Stick" as early as 1976. Ian's typed manuscript, which differs only slightly from