Golden Brown

"Golden Brown" is a song by English rock band the Stranglers, released as a 7-inch single on EMI's Liberty label in 1982. Noted for its distinctive harpsichord instrumentation, it was the second single released from the band's sixth studio album La Folie (1981). The single peaked at No. 2 on the UK Singles Chart, making it the band's highest-charting single in the country.
The main body of the song has a triple metre waltz rhythm, with beats grouped in threes, but the instrumental parts add an extra beat to create a phrase of thirteen beats. The thirteen beats appear in the sheet music as alternating bars of 8 and 8, which has also been described as three bars of 4 followed by one bar of 4. Sheet music of "Golden Brown" on musicnotes.com is published in B-flat minor.
The music was largely written by keyboardist Dave Greenfield and drummer Jet Black, with lyrics by singer/guitarist Hugh Cornwell. The music was adapted from an unused part of "Second Coming", a track which featured on their previous album.
According to bassist Jean-Jacques Burnel, the song's atypical style for the group was intended to defy expectations: "The whole thing about that song is it really represented us sticking our fingers up to our detractors".
In his 2001 book The Stranglers Song by Song, Cornwell states: "'Golden Brown' works on two levels. It's about heroin and also about a girl... both provided me with pleasurable times."
Initially, the band's label was hesitant to release the song as a single. Burnel recalled, "We had to insist on it being released. We'd been taken over by EMI and they thought we were awful – and they hated 'Golden Brown'. They said: this song, you can't dance to it, you're finished". The label ultimately released the song during the Christmas season, leaving it to compete with Christmas songs. Burnel stated, "They thought, it's weak, it's gonna die, it's gonna drown in the tsunami of Christmas shit… but it didn't. It developed legs of its own, it became a worldwide hit".
Originally featured on the group's album La folie, which was released in November 1981, and later on the US pressings of Feline (1983), "Golden Brown" was released as a single in January 1982, and was accompanied by a music video. The single reached No. 2 in the official UK Singles Chart in February 1982. David Hamilton, disc jockey on the middle-of-the-road and comparatively conservative BBC Radio 2, made the single his "record of the week". In a 2017 interview for Dutch television station Top 2000 a gogo, Hugh Cornwell said that he believed the song would have made it to the top spot if bassist Burnel had not told the press that it was about heroin, at which point broadcasters removed it from their playlists. "I would have waited till it got to Number 1 and then said it," he commented. EMI instead blamed the single's failure to reach the top spot on sales of both the studio and live single releases of the Jam's "Town Called Malice", the number one single at the time, being counted together. The song also reached the Top 10 in Ireland, Flanders, the Netherlands, and Australia.
In 1995, Black, Burnel and Greenfield appeared with impressionist Rory Bremner on his satirical Christmas special performing a parody version of the song about future Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who was then Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer.
In a 2012 BBC Radio 2 listener poll of the nation's favourite singles to have peaked at number two, "Golden Brown" ranked fifth.
In January 2014, NME ranked the song at No. 488 on its list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time".
The video for "Golden Brown" was directed by Lindsey Clennell. It depicts the band members as explorers in Egypt in the 1920s and performers for a fictional "Radio Cairo".
The video is intercut with stock footage of the Giza pyramid complex, the Mir-i-Arab Madrasah in Bukhara, the Shah Mosque in Isfahan, the Great Sphinx, sailing feluccas, Bedouins riding camels, and camel racing in the United Arab Emirates. The performance scenes were filmed in the Leighton House Museum in Holland Park, London, which was also featured in the video for "Gold" by Spandau Ballet in 1983.
Songs, lyrics and music by the Stranglers.
Side one
Side two
Side one
Side two
Remix
In 1996 British hip hop group Kaleef's re-working of the song reached number 22 on the UK charts. The following year, a cover version by soul singer Omar reached number 37.
In 2007 British singer Jamelia released the single "No More", which heavily samples "Golden Brown".
In 2012 Cornwell sang a mariachi version of the song, backed by Mexican-British band Mariachi Mexteca (later known as the Mariachis).
In 2020 British YouTuber and saxophonist Laurence Mason's cover of "Golden Brown" in the style of Dave Brubeck's "Take Five" was viewed over a million times, leading to a commercial release via Amazon and iTunes and as a vinyl single under the title "Take Vibe EP". The vinyl release stayed two weeks in the Official Vinyl Singles Chart's Top 40, peaking at No 24. By 2025 the video had received more than 11 million views.