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© 2021 AFPRolling Stones drop hit 'Brown Sugar' from U.S. tour
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© 2021 AFP
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Skeptical
"You picked up on that, huh?"
Something about a septuagenarian trying to sound modern . . .
Danielsan
Once all references to past misdeeds are censored, those whose ancestors were allegedly oppressed will have no grounds for complaint.
Bob Fosse
They might want to change that tour name.
JeffLee
Oh, no, those things actually happened! So let's erase their mentioning. Societies that practice such censorship, whether voluntary or enforced, are always awful societies, points out this armchair historian.
Tom San
If the "woke" movement gets their way, there'll be no more Rolling Stones.
Express sister
If time gets its way, there will be no Rolling Stones.
Strangerland
Are they? Got some examples, or just innuendo?
Blacklabel
Cancel culture, baby.
Strangerland
Who is cancelling them? Is their tour off now?!
Blacklabel
Might as well be once people who don’t listen to their music and never will dictate the set list at a concert they won’t attend.
Strangerland
Oh, so they haven't been canceled? What are you guys freaking out about then?
Sounds like more manufactured outrage.
sourpuss
By this logic any textbook that mentions slavery should be censored because slavery was racist.
Doh!
Tom San
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 1989 .
Good thing there wasn't a "woke" movement back then.
Express sister
Can you demonstrate that this is the case? Thanks.
Express sister
There were many movements in 1989 that the right would have called, "woke", if the term had existed back then. Like the boycott of apartheid South Africa, or the fight of the LGBTQ community, especially in the face of government indifference to the AIDS pandemic.
Conservatives were opposed to those movements then. They're opposed to equality now.
Blacklabel
non concert goers, non fans, who have the media platform.
So ”woke” journalists and Twitter.
No fan would go to the concert hoping they don’t play this song and being angry if they did.
Express sister
I'm not a fan of the Rolling Stones myself (because I'm under the age of 60) but I can imagine fans who love the band but dislike the song. I like lots of bands who have songs I dislike.
I think music journalists and people in the industry probably are fans, or at least very much enjoy, the work of one of the most influential bands of the 20th century. I'm neither, and I'm not a fogey, so I don't really care about them, as I say, but I wouldn't dismiss anyone who disagrees with me as a "fake fan".
Bob Fosse
I’ll just listen to the sole expert on this matter:
In 1995 Jagger told Rolling Stone magazine that "I never would write that song now…I would probably censor myself.”
How about that? He knew more about this 25 years ago than you do now. So you can put the brakes in the outrage.
commanteer
Mozart, Beethoven, Ravel, Nat King Cole, Sinatra, Billie Holiday, Patsy Cline, Robert Johnson, Django Reinhardt... tons of great music from before I was born of which I am a huge fan. I can't imagine tuning out the great music that was created because it was popular before I was born. That would be a great loss to anyone.
Express sister
(I'm just having a little joke)
GdTokyo
Taking it off the playlist seems a bit extreme to me.
snowymountainhell
“Jagger is an acute businessman” AND he has ‘acute angina’. It’s probably for the best that he refrain from any brown sugar as well. We still don’t know the cause of his bandmate. RIP Charlie Watts.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/despite-his-heart-operation-mick-jagger-could-be-jumpin-in-a-flash-vmffhjwfmenglisc aspyrgend
Political correctness gone mad!
itsonlyrocknroll
Brown Sugar is a reference to opioid drugs, horrors' of slavery?
I think, Keef many have lost more than his marbles when he toppled out of a tree and scrambled his memory.
Brown Sugar
https://rehabs.in/indian-drug-guide/brown-sugar/
Coulda been
The woke warriors strike again.
itsonlyrocknroll
Up And Down With The Rolling Stones
Tony Sanchez.....
Read this, Sanchez was Richards errand boy for some eight years.
Quote......
All the slavery and whipping is a double meaning for the perils of being "mastered" by Brown Heroin, or "Brown Sugar." The drug cooks brown in a spoon
HBJ
Why does everything have to be black or white? What's happened to all the shades of grey?
They either play the song or don't - and if they don't then that means it's cancel culture?
Nobody has been cancelled here.
It sounds like they've just decided to take the song off the set list because of the current climate, and the specific audiences they are likely to be playing to.
We all do 'self censorship' ourselves every day. I will speak differently depending on who I speak to. I wouldn't dream of speaking to my gran the same way I speak to my friends. I wouldn't talk about the same topics with my co workers compared to my brothers.
If I decide to 'tone down' my language when I meet my gran, that doesn't mean I've been cancelled. It means I'm able to read the room, and behave accordingly.
That's what appears to have happened here - they've 'read the room' and decided the song isn't appropriate to perform.
itsonlyrocknroll
Richards and Jagger could market blood out stone.
This nonsense has little or nothing in relation to servitude, serfdom, subjugation.
Both Jagger and Richards pulled Brown Sugar because. to do so would turbo charge opportunities a PR campaign coupled with a the underpinning of social media
itsonlyrocknroll
The Rolling Stones - Brown Sugar (Live) - OFFICIAL
Texas 1972.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fmfi3UbDPnQ
Now, Jagger, Richards wouldn't recognize a black bondsman or women if they fell from the lighting gantry above and landed on top of them.
What gets right up my hooter, is one of my most iconic tracks is fool to cry
What on earth have Jagger and Richards become?
Attilathehungry
This is a brave step for the Stones, voluntarily giving up their White Privilege and showing sensitivity to the very real pain experienced by 2SLGBTQQIA+ bodies when they are subjected to such 'music'.
I am now eagerly awaiting OTHER artists whose work contains similar hurtful lyrics and racist slurs agains BIPOC people.
Cardi B? Snoop? anybody out there.....
anybody.......
Helix
Fool to Cry is obviously hurtful to fools - and we know there are plenty of them waiting to take offense.
How about Miss You, where Jagger sings about “colored girls dying to meet you”?
Too Much Blood is about a murder - and of a woman no less!
We haven’t even scratched the surface of problematic Stones songs . I could go on but just the thought of it all is so I stressful I need my safe space!
Bob Fosse
Brown Sugar is 50 years old. Pull up a comfy chair, you’ll be waiting a while.
Helix
Their song Gimme Shelter has a section with a black woman ( oh dear!) singing “Rape, Murder!”
Time to cancel The Rolling Stones.
Helix
@Bob Fosse Brown Sugar is 50 years old. Pull up a comfy chair, you’ll be waiting a while.
I don’t follow your “logic” Bob. Could you explain.
Helix
Would the audience sing the words if the band played only the instrumental and are those singing racist?
You bet! Especially if the audience is white. Critical Race Theory teaches us that all whites are inherently racist. Any blacks in the audience singing along are just Tomming.
Helix
I’m having extreme difficulty swallowing Richards’ explanation that Brown Sugar is “about the horrors of slavery”. Pull the other one Keef!
Express sister
Does it? First I've heard of it.
starpunk
The same week the Stones first played in my hometown there was an ad on TV for a brand name of the confectionary product and it used the song's chorus. I litterally leaned over on the couch and LMAO.
Funny thing is, I've heard that this song was banned from radio in the so-called Bible Belt because of the implied interracial sexual connotations. Furthermore, both times that I have seen the Rolling Stones the stadium crowd consisted of people of every category and classification and ethnicity - Any Colo(u)r You Like.
And that includes Black Americans. They know that the Rolling Stones are greatly inspired by the music of Black Americans. Besides, it's simply a sing-song for many of us. It mentions slavery but it sure doesn't glorify it by any means, just like 'Undercover Of the Night' (a Top 10 when I was a teenager) certainly does not glorify the Latin American fascist dictatorships prevalient during the 70s and 80s.
When the Stones played this number, Mick would strut his butt on the walkway and snarl the lyrics. He (used to) do a leg kick while the crowd sung along, 'I say "yeah, yeah, yeah, ****whooooh!!!!"'. And we'd love it!
Still, if this song has been played at every gig since 1970 then maybe it's time to retire it, at least for a little while. They've got LOTS of other great songs to pull out of the hat, a few surprizes never hurt anyone. At my second Stones show they played my college's fight song 'Hang On Sloopy' (Ohio State University) and then Ron Wood whipped out an electric sitar for 'Paint It Black'.
As for that famous riff, it's used again on their hit '(Stuck Between a) Rock And a Hard Place' which is a song with a lyrical theme and content that is much more relevant today than it was in 1990. I saw them do it in 1997, it'll work up a crowd. I guarantee it.
starpunk
Of course the Stones have done songs that are a lot more offensive than 'Brown Sugar' ever could be or interpreted to be. The last song on 'Goat Head Soup' is 'Star Star', better known by a more explicit word. It's not the repeated use of that word that's so bad, it's the raunchy descriptive content in the lyrics themselves that make that song so offensive. And there's no disguising the meaning or any real metaphors as to what it's all about.
Recently 'Goat Head Soup' got re-released in several forms and formats with outtakes, remixes, B-sides, unreleased tracks, demos, etc. One of the songs that didn't see the light of day (until now) is titled, 'You Should've Seen Her Ass'. And in 1983 they released 'The Pain of Love' on the 'Undercover' album.
Need I say more?