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My research examines how non-Aboriginal Australian composers have interacted with Australian Indigenous music. I would argue that whether Mick Jagger, in writing Brown Sugar, intended it to be racist misses the point. Pulling the song from the set list seems to Morgan an unacceptable confession of guilt. Morgan also draws attention to what he sees as a "double standard" for rap music where racist and misogynist tropes abound. Richards' mildly defensive tone fuels broadcaster Piers Morgan bellicose defence of Brown Sugar as a "song aimed at defending and supporting black women". 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. He asserts Brown Sugar is a "lascivious celebration of sexual cliches associated with slavery." Related articles 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. Through the course of the song the singer moves from observer to an agent of this sexualisation.Īnd all her boyfriends were sweet 16 I'm no school boy but I know what I like You should have heard them just around midnight.

Brown Sugar, how come you taste so good? Brown Sugar, just like a young girl should.Ĭontemporary and informed audiences would also recognise "brown sugar" as a reference to heroin.