Rock ‘n’ roll, from its very origins, is inherently touched by darkness, but for ‘Brown Sugar’, The Rolling Stones seemed to be operating with the steadfast aim of mining the depths of rock’s densest dark matter and packaging it in a thrashing little ditty. It might not sound that way on the melodic surface, but few songs have a darker undercurrent than this troubled 1971 icon.
The subject matter is two-fold, and neither brings any light to the other. Ostensibly the song is about Africans who were sold to New Orleans plantations and raped by their white masters. The connotations of this horrific overture were then played upon to impart the metaphorical double meaning of being a slave to the narcotic demands of brown heroin.
- Far Out
