Golden Brown - Overview

Overview

Originally featured on the group's album La Folie, which was released in November 1981, and later on the USA pressings of Feline, "Golden Brown" was released as a single in December 1981, and was accompanied by a video. It reached #2 in the official UK singles chart in February 1982, behind "Town Called Malice" by The Jam. It was the comparatively conservative BBC Radio 2, at that time a middle-of-the-road music radio station, which decided to make the record the single of the week, a surprising step considering the band were almost as notorious as Sex Pistols only a few years before. 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 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.

It was also featured in the films, Snatch and He Died with a Felafel in His Hand and is included on both soundtrack albums.