The Rolling Stones have retired “Brown Sugar” from their stage show. An oft-performed track from their classic, half-century-old Sticky Fingers album, it’s a raunchy stomper about the sexual savoring of women of color. The lyrics use wicked images of 19th Century slave trade minglings as a fetid atmospheric element — the same hothouse that produced Richard Fleischer’s Mandingo (‘75).
I never processed “Brown Sugar” as anything more than a bad-boy taunt with erotic icing flung about. But in today’s context none of this works and so the song is toast.
Mick Jagger and Keith Richard have implied that the song’s excommunication may be temporary, and that it may return when the cultural mood shifts back into a semblance of sanity. Have they been talking to Ted Sarandos?
From a 10.13 TMZ story:
