The Rolling Stones retired one of their most popular rock songs due to lyrics that depict the horrors of slavery, reports The NY Post.
The Stones have not played the 1971 hit “Brown Sugar” on their current tour and said the blues classic has been removed from their setlist.
“You picked up on that, huh?,” Keith Richards, 77, responded to the LA Times when asked if Stones had cut the second most performed tune in their catalog amid a climate of heightened cultural sensitivity.
“I don’t know. I’m trying to figure out with the sisters quite where the beef is. Didn’t they understand this was a song about the horrors of slavery? But they’re trying to bury it.”
The first verse of the hit song depicts slaves being sold and beaten in Louisiana, with references to a “slaver” that whips “women just around midnight.”
The famous chorus portrays a non-consensual sex encounter between the violent master and a young female slave, while possibly also alluding to heroin use.
In the next verse, the song describes the abuse suffered by slaves on a plantation. Lead singer Mick Jagger ends the tune by singing, “How come you taste so good … just like a black girl should.”
“We’ve played ‘Brown Sugar’ every night since 1970,” Richards told the newspaper.
The Stones have played the song live 1,136 times, second to only “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” according to setlist.fm.
Jagger is clearly not singing the song in the first person, but the danceable tune has been slammed in recent years, with some critics dubbing it “stunningly crude and offensive.”
Other commentators have conceded it is “gross, sexist, and stunningly offensive,” but still rocking.
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