Golden Brown
Golden Brown was a waltzing ballad in a 3/4 time signature from The Stranglers. (The instrumental bridges add an extra beat in every fourth measure, effectively producing a 13/4 time signature)
It was an unexpected hit in early 1982 when it reached number two in the official UK charts.
It is interesting to note that the song was not the first choice of single from the album La Folie released the previous year.
The highly conservative Radio Two, at that time an MOR station with an audience mainly comprised of housewives up and down the UK, decided to make the record the single of the week, an apparently unlikely step considering the band was almost as notorious as The Sex Pistols only a few short years before.
The management at Radio Two also failed to notice that the song was actually all about the drug heroin, although the band always claimed the song to be an aural Rorschach test and that people only heard in it what they wanted to hear. The success of this song commercially is probably the single factor that secured The Stranglers their continuing life in pop mainstream for the remainder of the 1980s.
This song is also in the Snatch soundtrack.
