Mick Jagger Called The Controversial Song A “Mess”
The Rolling Stones built an entire musical career on making pearl-clutchers blush, but some tracks have ended up being too scandalous even for these long-time rockers, including the controversial song Mick Jagger said he would “never write” today.
Despite its popularity, the band removed the song from their setlist following public outcry and the frontman’s change of heart. The Rolling Stones used “Brown Sugar” as the opening track to their 1971 release ‘Sticky Fingers,’ which also included notable (and far tamer, lyrically speaking) hits like “Wild Horses” and “Dead Flowers.”
The song was an instant hit, skyrocketing to the top of the U.S. and Canada charts and riding comfortably at No. 2 in the U.K. Jagger wrote the song while filming Ned Kelly in Australia—what he would later call “really odd circumstances.”As indelible as the groove to “Brown Sugar” may be, the song came under fire due to its questionable lyrical content.
The song fetishizes Black women in the slave trade, with each verse presenting a new character who is taking advantage of the enslaved women: the slave owners, the house boys, and even the narrator. The fact that “brown sugar” was a common nickname for heroin only added to the song’s suggestive nature.
And apparently, it became too salacious even for the Stones frontman. In the same 1995 Rolling Stone interview where he called the song’s origins “odd,” Jagger said the subject matter was “the whole mess thrown in. God knows what I’m on about on that song.
It’s such a mishmash. All the nasty subjects in one go.” He continued, “I didn’t think about it at the time; I never would write that song now. I would probably censor myself. “Oh God, I can’t. I’ve got to stop. I can’t just write raw like that.”
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