It’s The Singer, Not The Song
- Written by: Bill German
Cancel culture scares the shit out of me. And it doesn’t matter which direction it’s coming from, the right or the left. (Neither has the monopoly, of course.) Bans on books, bans on songs, I got a problem with it. And I say that not just as a consumer, but as an author.
So I’ve been keeping an eye on this whole “Brown Sugar” mess, and am curious to see what transpires (or doesn’t transpire) when the Stones open their 2024 tour in Houston on April 28th.
As you may know, the Stones haven’t performed “Brown Sugar” since 2019, and it’s got lots of folks in a tizzy. Some accuse the Stones of caving in to a “woke mob” and/or engaging in self-censorship (due to the song's lyrics about slavery), and I’ve seen arguments along the lines of, “How can Blacks be offended by the song if it was covered by Little Richard and Tina Turner?”
Like millions of others, I consider “Brown Sugar” to be one of the best all-time party songs in the history of rock ’n’ roll. A highlight of Stones concerts for half a century. So it’s sad to see it suddenly disappear from the band’s repertoire.
But I have some theories as to why it happened, and I do believe that most folks are overlooking the behind-the-scenes picture. Yes, we all know how certain sports teams have been pressured into changing their names and how statues have come down from certain town squares, but, whether you agree with those moves or not, I don’t think that’s what’s going on here.
First, some facts:
There’s no evidence of any formal protests against the song. In other words, there have been no pickets, no lawsuits, and no vandalized street ads. Compare that to 1978, when Rev. Jesse Jackson’s organization picketed the Stones’ Rockefeller Plaza office over the lyrics to “Some Girls,” and 1976, when a billboard for the “Black and Blue” album was graffitied with the words, “This is a crime against women.” (Photos below.)
There have also been no quid pro quos from the showbiz community (like when Ed Sullivan made ’em change the lyrics to “Let’s Spend The Night Together”) or from any governmental agencies, like when China’s Ministry of Culture made them cut five songs (including “Beast of Burden”) from their 2006 repertoire before allowing them to play Shanghai.
If I’m wrong about any of that (i.e., if I missed some sort of picket, etc.), then I urge you to drop me a line (with photographic proof), and I’ll acknowledge it lickety-split. Because my personal goal in life has never been to win or engage in silly arguments, it’s been to observe situations and suss out the truth. I just think that if an organized anti-“Brown Sugar” movement actually existed, we would have heard from them by now.
And yes, I'm fully aware of the editorial in the Chicago Tribune, which appeared right before the band’s 2019 tour, and which pleaded for the song’s retirement. In fact, I’ll provide the link to the article here. But a single editorial does not a movement make, and this one in particular did not gain traction in the Twittersphere or in real life, as the Stones continued to play “Brown Sugar” every night of that 2019 tour.
So maybe it’s time we all admit to ourselves (myself included) that we have no specific answer as to why the Stones suddenly pulled the song from their 2021 and 2022 set lists. (They didn’t tour in 2020 and 2023.) Mick has yet to elaborate on the situation (although he did admit to some misgivings about the song in a 1995 interview, long before “woke” became a thing) and Keith, in a 2021 L.A. Times interview, said he didn’t think the song was problematic at all, and that he hoped to “resurrect” it soonish.
That comment from Keith (combined with Mick’s non-comment) strengthens the theory I’m about to lay on ya, which is based on my up-close personal experiences with the ditty’s co-authors (who, by the way, have vehemently argued with each other about song selections since at least the 1989 “Steel Wheels” tour).
It’s my firm belief that the decision to drop “Brown Sugar” was made unilaterally by the band’s lead singer, and that it has a lot more to do with his private life than with any perceived public pressure.
Mick is the one member of the Jagger-Richards songwriting team with an African American daughter. Karis is now 53, and has kids of her own. And so, is it that hard to believe that when Mick confronts the song's lyrics, such as “Hear him whip the women just around midnight,” it fucks with his head a bit and elicits a pause?
In sports, they call it “the yips.” It’s when a thought gets into a player’s brain and causes him to screw up the simplest task. It’s why Steve Sax couldn’t throw to first base, and probably why Shaquille O’Neal missed so many foul shots. Well, I think the lyrics to “Brown Sugar” have finally caught up with Mick Jagger and given him the yips. Because he realizes that the "Black girl" on that “Gold Coast slave ship,” who was “sold in the market down in New Orleans” and now finds herself on the wrong end of that whip, must have surely looked like his mixed-race daughter. Mick is singing about Karis’s ancestors.
It cannot be denied that there is a performative role-playing aspect to everything Mick Jagger does onstage. It’s his brand. We’ve all seen him wear devilish costumes while singing “Sympathy For The Devil” and we’ve also seen him ride an inflatable giant penis during “Starfucker” (on the ’75 tour) and whack an inflatable dog during “Street Fighting Man” (in 1990). So while he may not have specifically portrayed a “scarred old slaver” in his five decades of performing “Brown Sugar,” he did convey a tough, nasty, and sexual vibe during the song (an attitude that is the band's trademark; I pray they never age out of it), and he did successfully motivate tens of thousands of us each night to chant “Yeah! Yeah! Woo!” in approval and celebration.
And so, maybe, just maybe, as 80-year-old Mick looks back on his work and becomes more invested as a dad and granddad (and great granddad!), he’s paying more attention to the song’s painful imagery and has grown uncomfortable as the ringmaster of our “Brown Sugar” jube.
Remember, out of every person in that stadium (including me, you, and even Keith), he’s the one responsible for uttering those lyrics into a microphone, and for whipping the crowd into an exuberant frenzy, while informing us about someone’s misery. (Yes, we’re well aware that the “scarred old slaver” and “houseboy” are “doin’ alright.” They’re having a great night. But there’s more to the story, isn’t there?)
Our job as audience members, of course, is to simply enjoy the show. We didn’t pay five hundred or a grand to get a fuckin’ history lesson. We came to drink beer and to get our ya-ya’s out, and to not intellectualize lyrics from fifty+ years ago. And whenever we’ve sung along to “Brown Sugar” (be it at a Stones show or at karaoke), we did so by rote, and without parsing every word.
Same goes for Keith. When he’s onstage, his primary job – which we need him to do forever – is to be the “human riff,” and to convey his toughness and grittiness while soaking up the adulation. Rock ’n’ roll happens below the neck, he often says.
In that 2021 L.A. Times article, Keith made the case that the song doesn’t condone or trivialize slavery, and that it instead points out its horrors. I’m not sure that’s what Mick and Keith had in mind when they wrote it, but Keith’s argument did get me thinking. I wonder how “Brown Sugar” would be perceived if it were performed as a solemn folk ballad or a protest song, and not as a raucous and sexual rock song.
I’m not being cute about that. What I’m saying is, imagine Joan Baez sitting on a stool at Newport or wherever, covering “Brown Sugar” as if it were “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.” There’d be no celebratory yeah-yeah-woos from the audience, and it certainly wouldn’t have inspired a Chicago Trib editorial.
In other words, what makes the song problematic for Mick is the cognitive dissonance: He’s projecting his patented Jagger swagger and getting us to cheer along, while singing about human suffering. (Worth noting: Dylan performed a rocked-out version of “Brown Sugar” on his 2002 tour, but he omitted the “Hear him whip the women” line and obviously didn’t attempt “the moves like Jagger.”)
Whatever the case, Mick has the right to not sing a song he literally co-owns. Same way we have the right to not attend his concerts and to boycott his band’s products. As for me, well, I’ve heard “Brown Sugar” so many times in concert that, as much as I’ve enjoyed seeing them perform it, I wouldn’t object to them attempting “Citadel” or “Turd on the Run” instead. (Not to mention the fact that there have been oodles of Stones shows in the past fifty years – particularly in 1978 – where “Satisfaction,” “Sympathy,” “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” and/or “Street Fighting Man” were left off the set list.)
Of course, I’m not stupid enough to suggest that Mick made his decision in a vacuum. I fully acknowledge that books, songs, and films get reevaluated over time, and are viewed strictly through the lens of the current zeitgeist. So is it possible that the events of 2020 (George Floyd, etc., etc.) played a role in Mick’s consideration? Certainly. But until he speaks to it, we don’t actually know.
Additionally, it’s possible that some “coastal elite” pal of Mick’s got into his ear at some fancy cocktail party and conveyed their opinion. But how exactly do we see that playing out? Do we really think that Barbra Streisand or Elton John could influence Mick Jagger’s set-list choices any more than he could influence theirs? I have my doubts about that.
If anyone with any real influence got into Mick’s head – and I’m not saying anyone did – I suspect it would’ve been Karis herself (or perhaps one of her half-siblings), reminding dear old dad that fifty thousand of his followers are whooping it up each night to a song that’s partially about Karis’s ancestors getting raped and brutalized by a slave master.
There’s also the very slight possibility that Chuck Leavell, the Stones’ keyboardist – and the guy whose job includes curating the band’s set lists – has weighed in on the matter. He lives on a plantation in Twiggs County, Georgia, an area that had a large slave population in the pre-Civil War days, so maybe it’s something he contemplates from time to time.
But ah, these are only my theories, dear friends, nothing more. Ultimately – and this next point needs to be our biggest takeaway – there is no one in the world, not even Mick Jagger, who’s saying you can’t or shouldn’t blast “Brown Sugar” at full volume on your living room hi-fi or on your Walkman. (Hey, don’t knock it! I still use a flip phone!) And there’s no one calling for the song’s removal from YouTube, Spotify, the radio, or from any of the Stones’ reissued albums or concert recordings, including the brand new official release of the band’s 2002 Wiltern show.
If anything, it proves that no one is actually canceling “Brown Sugar,” and that it’s just a matter of Mick Jagger not wanting to sing it anymore. A decision we should try to respect. (PS: As anyone who’s read my book knows, I don’t often exhibit “sympathy for the singer.” But in this case, I do.)
So I suggest we not get so worked up and angry about the situation. For one, it might all be a moot point come April 28th. (Perhaps with some modified lyrics.) But moreover, if there’s one thing I’ve learned from my time around the Stones, it’s that they don’t take marching orders or advice from the public.
