In your own words, describe a cinnamon girl.
Your time starts … now!
An earthy hippie chick. Shawls and scarves and dangly earrings, and smells like patchouli. Expects you to buy her pot. She’ll sleep with your best friend, and if you complain, she’ll say you can’t tie her down, man, she’s a free spirit. And she’ll make you feel bad for getting upset. And somehow, no one ever calls her on her shit, and she never gets treated badly. She’s the type that always finds someone to take care of her.
Like this, but with finger cymbals.
I’ll add this visual to your spot-on words.
I could be happy…
With a bit of this:
I thought of just a pretty girl with cinnamon-colored skin. Reddish-brown.
I was well under 10 years old when I used to hear this song and I always thought he was talking about wanting to be with a black girl. I guess my young mind equated cinnamon with dark skin (which would really be Indian I suppose, but I didn’t know any Indians in SoCal in 1973)and I got some idea that he was yearning for something he couldn’t have / forbidden fruit sort of thing.
Listening to it now, it really is a great, evocative song.
To me, the “cinnamon” is talking more about her personality than her appearance. She’s fiery - has a hot temper, talks quickly, and is the kind of person you don’t want angry at you. I guess I imagine her with red hair, pale skin, and freckles. She probably wears a pea coat with a knit beret and loves getting outraged at social injustices.
Heroin.
Which I’m pretty sure is what the song is about anyway.
Hey, I went to college with that girl!
Same here, I always assumed a “cinnamon girl” was a mulatta. Guess I was underthinking it.
Yeah.
No, that is ginger, cinnamon is a different spice.
When I was younger and listened to this song I thought of a slightly ethnic girl of some sort. Neither black nor white but somewhere in between.
I was dating an adopted girl who was told she was Native American but sure looked Mexican/Hispanic to me.
So that may have colored my thinking. 