Golden Brown - The Stranglers

Trivia

"Golden Brown" is a song by the English rock band The Stranglers. It was released as a 7" single in January 1982, on Liberty.

It reached #2 in the official UK singles chart in February 1982, behind "Town Called Malice" by The Jam.

The comparatively conservative BBC Radio Two, at that time a middle-of-the-road (MOR) music radio station, decided to make the record the single of the week, a surprising step considering the band was almost as notorious as Sex Pistols only a few short years before. The fourth line of the song, "With my mind she runs," is a common source of mondegreens. The band claimed that the song's lyrics were akin to an aural Rorschach test and that people only heard in it what they wanted to hear, although this did not prevent persistent allegations that the lyrics alluded to the narcotic heroin (although in an interview with Channel 4, Drummer Jet Black quipped it was a song about Marmite)

The single was a hit around the world, scaling the Top 10 as far away as Australia. Its commercial success was probably the single factor that secured The Stranglers their continuing life in pop mainstream for the remainder of the 1980s.

There has been much controversy surrounding the lyrics. In his 2001 book The Stranglers Song By Song, Hugh Cornwell clearly states "'Golden Brown' works on two levels. It's about heroin and also about a girl". Essentially the lyrics describe how "both provided me with pleasurable times."

The music was largely written by keyboardist Dave Greenfield, with lyrics by Hugh Cornwell.

Two shots from Golden Brown: the band performing the song in Leighton House with Baroque instruments, and as explorers.The video for "Golden Brown" depicts the group both as explorers in an Arabic country (images of the Pyramids in the sequence allude to the Giza area of Egypt) in the 1920s and performers for a fictional "Radio Cairo". In addition to the Pyramids the video is intercut with stock footage of a madrassa in Uzbekistan, and Great Sphinx, dhows sailing, and Bedouins riding and camel racing in the United Arab Emirates. The performance scenes were filmed in the Leighton House Museum in Holland Park, London.

Lyrics

Golden brown texture like sun
Lays me down with my mind she runs
Throughout the night
No need to fight
Never a frown with golden brown

Every time just like the last
On her ship tied to the mast
To distant lands
Takes both my hands
Never a frown with golden brown

Golden brown finer temptress
Through the ages she's heading

West
From far away
Stays for a day
Never a frown with golden brown

Never a frown
With golden brown
Never a frown
With golden brown