The brutal trade in enslaved people within the US has been largely whitewashed out of history Didn’t they understand this was a song about the horrors of slavery? I’m trying to figure out with the sisters quite where the beef is. Keith Richards highlights this ambiguity in his comments on the removal of the song. Its removal from the set list causes us to question whether the song is racist and speaks to the changing parameters of ethical practice for musicians.
The song undeniably deals in confronting subject matter. The Stones performing in 1971, the year Brown Sugar was released. He asserts Brown Sugar is a “lascivious celebration of sexual clichés associated with slavery.” Patrick Burke, in Rock, Race and Radicalism in the 1960s sees the Stones as wallowing in racist stereotypes. A recent essay in the Cambridge Companion to the Rolling Stones examines the contribution of non-band members to Brown Sugar, notably pianist Ian Stewart and saxophonist Bobby Keys, and interprets the lyrics as nothing more than “famously bawdy”.īut for many race is central to any consideration of the Stones’ output from this period. Some have little to say about matters of race in the Stone’s music. This combination of sexual imagery and illicit drug references in the song’s lyrics contributes to the culturally transgressive place the Rolling Stones occupy in popular music history. While some interpretations of the song would like to see it primarily as a celebration of a drug counterculture, any pretence the phrase “Brown Sugar” is other than a reference to a black woman falls away in the final lyric of the studio album. You should have heard them just around midnight. Through the course of the song the singer moves from observer to an agent of this sexualisation. The lyrics explore the sexual exploitation of a black woman by slave traders and slave owners in America’s south, presenting a sexualised view of a marginalised group.īrown Sugar, just like a young girl should.Ĭontemporary and informed audiences would also recognise “brown sugar” as a reference to heroin. The song is emblematic of the Stones’ energetic rhythm and blues sound and has been a mainstay of their set list for decades. Brown Sugar was recorded in Alabama in late 1969 and released on the Rolling Stones’ 1971 album Sticky Fingers.
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