Brown Sugar (song)

"Brown Sugar"
Single by The Rolling Stones
from the album Sticky Fingers
B-side	"Bitch"/"Let It Rock" (UK) "Bitch" (US)
Released	16 April 1971 (UK) 7 May 1971 (US)
Format	7"
Recorded	2–4 December 1969, Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, Muscle Shoals, Alabama
Genre	Hard rock rock and roll
Length	3:50
Label	Rolling Stones Records
Writer(s)	Jagger/Richards
Producer(s)	Jimmy Miller
The Rolling Stones singles chronology
"Honky Tonk Women" (1969) "Brown Sugar" (1971) "Wild Horses" (1971)
Music sample "Brown Sugar" Sticky Fingers track listing 10 tracks Side one "Brown Sugar" "Sway" "Wild Horses" "Can't You Hear Me Knocking" "You Gotta Move" Side two "Bitch" "I Got the Blues" "Sister Morphine" "Dead Flowers" "Moonlight Mile" Alternative covers US 7" single cover

"Brown Sugar" is a song by The Rolling Stones. It is the opening track and lead single from their 1971 album Sticky Fingers. Rolling Stone magazine ranked it No. 495 on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time and at No. 5 on their list of the 100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time.

Though credited, like most of their compositions, to the singer/guitarist pair of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, the song was primarily the work of Jagger, who wrote it sometime during the filming of Ned Kelly in 1969. Originally recorded over a three-day period at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Muscle Shoals, Alabama from 2–4 December 1969, the song was not released until over a year later due to legal wranglings with the band's former label, though at the request of guitarist Mick Taylor, they debuted the number live during the infamous concert at Altamont on 6 December. The song was written by Jagger with Marsha Hunt in mind; Hunt was Jagger's secret girlfriend and mother of his first child Karis. It is also claimed it was written with Claudia Lennear in mind. Lennear made this claim on BBC's Radio 4 (25 February 2014, Today), saying that it was written with her in mind because at the time when it was written, Mick Jagger used to hang around with her.

In the documentary film Gimme Shelter (1970), an alternative mix of the song is played back to the band while they relax in a hotel in Alabama.

The song, with its prominent blues-rock riffs, dual horn/guitar instrumental break, and danceable rock rhythms, is representative of the Stones' definitive middle period and the tough, bluesy hard-rock most often associated with the group. In the liner notes to the 1993 compilation album Jump Back, Jagger says, "The lyric was all to do with the dual combination of drugs and girls. This song was a very instant thing, a definite high point." The song is in compound AABA form.