I fucking love the Stones, But the more I think about these lyrics, fuck me
Gold Coast slave ship bound for cotton fields
Sold in the market down in New Orleans
Scarred old slaver knows he’s doin’ all right
Hear him whip the women just around midnight
Brown Sugar, how come you taste so good
Brown Sugar, just like a young girl should
Drums beatin’ cold, English blood runs hot
Lady of the house wonderin’ when it’s gonna stop
House boy knows that he’s doin’ all right
You should have heard him just around midnight
Brown Sugar, how come you taste so good
Brown Sugar, just like a young girl should
Please tell me this is not a justification of masters fucking slaves.
From the perspective of 2019, the song is the ultimate troll job. Mick and Keith went out of their way to write a song that would offend every possible sensibility in 1971 but still manage to avoid dropping any of the “seven dirty words.” (That, by the way, could not be said about earlier drafts of the song.) From there, they added one of the best openings in rock history, one of Keith’s killer guitar riffs, and a blasting sax solo by Bobby Keyes. And it all paid off: the song shot to #1.
I happened to be listening to a radio documentary on the Stones yesterday. They played Brown Sugar, talked a bit about their desire to write something confronting about American slavery, and then the narrator said that Jagger acknowledged that it was a song he’d not have written now (whenever ‘now’ was when he said it). No cite beyond this second- (?third-) hand tidbit.
Lyrically you can get away with a lot when you belt out the lyrics in a garbled, British accent.
I was having dinner at a Mod Pizza (pick-your-own topping style pizzeria) when the song Let It Bleed came on. That definitely is a NSFW set of lyrics -not that anyone cared or could decipher the lyrics.
Also I challenge you to find someone who has never heard Tumbling Dice, have them sit down with pencil and paper and write down a single line from the song. Let us know how that goes.
Remember that the Stones of that era were noted for gritty lyrics. Sympathy for the Devil, Gimme Shelter (with a jolly chorus of “Rape! Murder!”), and Stray Cat Blues (about sex with a 15-year-old groupie) might all be questionable (to say the least) today.
To focus for a moment on the misogyny rather than the racism: Yes, the casual misogyny Mick displays in a scene in Gimme Shelter (1970) is jarring to me, since the rest of the film feels so contemporary (hard to believe Altamont was 50 years ago this week).
Not picking on Mick — it was common then.
Indeed, it’s the one thing that makes the TV series West Wing (c. 2000-2005) feel out of place today — the misogynistic comments and attitudes. It’s an interesting change over time — the biggest steps bring during 1970s “women’s lib” and 2017-19 “metoo,” but with gradual yet steady progress in between these periods as well.
Still a ways to go yet, though.
It’s what makes a lot of Frank Zappa’s music less enjoyable than it should be, too.
I feel the same about Zappa, among several others. Brilliant music tarnished by crap lyrics. Instrumentals like “Peaches en Regalia” shine on undimmed, though.
The Stones already had a “proud” tradition of misogynistic songs long before “Brown Sugar” of course (Out Of Time, Yesterday’s Paper, Under My Thumb). That was the continuation of misogyny in Blues lyrics. Robert Johnson’s line “I’m going to beat my woman, until I’m satisfied” would have been even too harsh for the Stones in their time, I think. (though some of Jagger’s lyrics were not much better)
There’s more awareness today. It goes to show how old that thread is that people were denying the existence of obvious misogyny that’s right in front of their noses.