1971 No. 1 Hit Ranked Among 'Greatest Songs of All Time' Released 55 Years Ago Today
If you're a diehard Rolling Stones fan, chances are you've gotten into a fair number of debates about which album is the band's absolute best...that is, if you can even decide on a personal favorite. Ultimately, it might just be impossible to choose one Stones record above all the others. Some will swear it's Exile on Main Street, others will say Let It Bleed, still others will vote for Beggars Banquet...and then, of course, there's 1971's Sticky Fingers.
Featuring "Wild Horses," "Bitch" and "Can't You Hear Me Knocking," to name just a few of the classic tunes, Sticky Fingers also gifted the world with one of the most iconic tracks in rock history: "Brown Sugar," released as a single on April 16, 1971.
The first single from Sticky Fingers, "Brown Sugar" went to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 on May 29, 1971, and stayed there for two weeks. In the years since, it's become one of the band's most beloved songs ever; Rolling Stone ranked it #495 on their list of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" in 2010.
Interestingly enough, decades after Sticky Fingers came out, Mick Jaggeradmitted he could "never" write a song like "Brown Sugar" again.
In a 1995 interview with Rolling Stone's Jann Wenner, Jagger reflected on what makes "Brown Sugar" "work like mad" as a song.
"That's a bit of a mystery, isn't it?" Jagger quipped. "I wrote that song in Australia in the middle of a field. They were really odd circumstances. I was doing this movie, Ned Kelly, and my hand had got really damaged in this action sequence. So stupid. I was trying to rehabilitate my hand and had this new kind of electric guitar, and I was playing in the middle of the outback and wrote this tune."
"But why it works? I mean, it's a good groove and all that," Jagger continued. "I mean, the groove is slightly similar to Freddy Cannon, this rather obscure '50s rock performer - "Tallahassee Lassie' or something. Do you remember this? 'She's down in F-L-A.' Anyway, the groove of that - boom-boom-boom-boom-boom - is 'going to a go-go' or whatever, but that's the groove."
As for the song's much-discussed lyrics, Jagger acknowledge that "Brown Sugar" references both drugs and women, not to mention a few other things.
"God knows what I'm on about on that song. It's such a mishmash. All the nasty subjects in one go," he said, adding that he "didn't think about it at the time," but "never would write that song now."
"I would probably censor myself," Jagger explained. "I'd think, 'Oh God, I can't. I've got to stop. I can't just write raw like that.'"
As Jagger himself sang, though...it's only rock and roll. (And everybody still likes it.)
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This story was originally published April 16, 2026 at 3:07 PM.