“Brown Sugar” by The Rolling Stones

"Brown Sugar" kicked the door in on Sticky Fingers in 1971, the opening track and lead single of the album, out on the band's own Rolling Stones Records. Mick Jagger wrote most of it, with Keith Richards sharing the credit, and it's the Stones at full strut: Richards chopping away on acoustic and electric guitars, Mick Taylor's guitar weaving around him, Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman locked into a groove that doesn't let up.

Jimmy Miller produced, Glyn Johns engineered and Jimmy Johnson mixed, and the band packed it with extra muscle: Ian Stewart hammering the piano, Jagger adding percussion on top of his sneering vocal, and Bobby Keys blowing saxophone that sounds like a bar fight spilling out onto the street. It's rock and roll with the grease still on it.

It went to number one in America and Canada and number two in Britain and Ireland, and Billboard counted it as the number 16 song of 1971. Rolling Stone later placed it at number five among the greatest guitar songs of all time, and rock radio has never stopped letting it swagger.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.