A comment on one of the previous posts in this mini-series of sweet songs suggested a couple with sugar in their titles. Neither was likely to feature here but that gave me the idea for a set that I could play, and I found ten songs without having to look too hard. So these are some sugar songs for you.

Could I start anywhere else? I doubt it:

Brown Sugar was released in April 1971, as the lead single for the Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers album – the one with the zip on the album sleeve. Yes, it did work (but you only got to see some underwear!). This was a US #1, but only got to #2 in the UK, where it spent three weeks behind Dawn’s Knock Three Times. Sometimes I despair of the British record buying public – how could we! The album went to #1 in both the US and the UK – the first time they had achieved that – and in many other countries as well. It has sold more than 3m copies in the US and 300k in the UK, and for my money is one of the greatest rock albums ever made. The song has been deemed to be both racist and sexist in our current times, and with its reference to slavery the band have stopped playing it in their live shows. I still think it is a great rock record, though, so as I don’t have to worry about not being paid for playing it I’m going with it anyway.

I played the companion piece to this one earlier in the series, so it seems right to share this too:

That was, of course, The Searchers with Sugar And Spice, which was released in October 1963, and was their second big UK hit of the year, getting to #2 in our charts, and making #44 in the US. It followed the success of their debut single, Sweets For My Sweet, which got to #1 here, and which as I said I played a couple of weeks ago. This song was written by their producer, Tony Hatch, and he followed a template from their first hit: it worked then, so why not repeat a winning formula? He presented the song to the band under the pseudonym of ‘Fred Nightingale’ as he was dubious about their response if they knew it was written by their record producer. The first line of the chorus,”Sugar and spice and all things nice,” references the nursery rhyme What Are Little Boys Made Of? while the following line is the title of a well-known Pete Seeger/Lee Hays composition from 1950, Kisses Sweeter than Wine. Hatch went on to have a prolific songwriting career, both on his own and then with Jackie Trent, who he later married. Among a massive list of artists for whom they wrote one of the best known is probably Petula Clark who, with Hatch’s help, had a string of 1960s hits, including the real biggie: Downtown. He and Jackie also wrote the theme tune for the Australian tv soap show Neighbours, which was once voted the world’s most recognised television theme song (don’t ask, I’ve no idea where that vote was!)

I could have played Neil Young’s original version of this next one, but I prefer Joni Mitchell’s voice. The clip is from a radio interview, and the song starts around 40 seconds in:

Sugar Mountain is a song composed by Neil Young on November 12, 1964, his 19th birthday, at the Victoria Hotel in Fort William, Ontario (now Thunder Bay), where he had been touring with his Winnipeg band the Squires. Its lyrics are reminiscences about his youth in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Joni Mitchell and Neil were friendly in those days, and the is how she knew the song, as she later explained:

“In 1965 I was up in Canada, and there was a friend of mine up there who had just left a rock’n’roll band (…) he had just newly turned 21 [actually Young had turned 19 in November 1964], and that meant he was no longer allowed into his favourite haunt, which was kind of a teeny-bopper club and once you’re over 21 you couldn’t get back in there anymore; so he was really feeling terrible because his girlfriends and everybody that he wanted to hang out with, his band could still go there, you know, but it’s one of the things that drove him to become a folk singer was that he couldn’t play in this club anymore. ‘Cause he was over the hill. (…) So he wrote this song that was called “Oh to live on sugar mountain” which was a lament for his lost youth. (…) And I thought, God, you know, if we get to 21 and there’s nothing after that, that’s a pretty bleak future, so I wrote a song for him, and for myself just to give me some hope. It’s called The Circle Game.”

A much more recent one now. A bit of pop rock for you, from a band I always liked:

The Lightning Seeds are an English rock band formed in Liverpool in 1989 by Ian Broudie, formerly of the bands Big in Japan and Care. Sugar Coated Iceberg was first released on their fourth album, Dizzy Heights, in November 1996: the album got to #11 in the UK and the dizzy heights (sorry) of #151 in Australia. This was the third single taken from it, in January 1997, and it peaked at #12 in the UK, whilst also making #76 in Germany. They were a band I always liked when I heard them on the radio, though the only album of theirs that I bought was Like You Do, a collection of their singles, which I played to bits during the long car commute to work: it is great, uplifting music when you’re in heavy traffic on London’s North Circular Road!

I’m closing today with a rocker, from one of my favourite bands:

Def Leppard released Pour Some Sugar On Me on their fourth album, Hysteria, in August 1987. The album was a massive success, and was the one that broke the band into the big time worldwide, having previously enjoyed chart success in the UK and the US. It got to #1 in the UK, the US, Australia, New Zealand, Finland and Norway, and #5 in Canada, and has gone 12x Platinum in the US for 12m sales, 2x Platinum in the UK for 600,000 and Diamond in Canada for 1m. This was the third single from it, in September 1987, peaking at #2 in the US and #18 in the UK. Despite the respective chart placings the single has sold more in the UK, 600,000 (Platinum) than in the US, where it has gone Gold for 500,000. This was another album that I loved and played to bits: 12 tracks, 62 minutes, and not a dud among them.

That’s it for today, and I just need to remind you of where I’ll be sharing this piece: at Esme’s Senior Salon Pit Stop and at Cathy’s Monday’s Music Moves Me. I hope you visit both – they are worth your time.

I’ll see you again in a few days. Until then, be happy and healthy, and try to stay warm as the temperatures fall here in the Northern Hemisphere. Take care 🤗