‘Golden Brown’: the greatest pop song of all time without a chorus?
In my humble opinion, the best punk music was made by artists posing as punks. While it is difficult to deny Sex Pistols and Ramones their due attention as pioneers and countercultural icons, their music was somewhat limited. I’m no prog-rocker, but I can appreciate the healthy medium provided by punk-adjacent artists like The Stranglers and post-punk gatekeepers like Joy Division, The Sound, Magazine, and Siouxsie and the Banshees.
While reading the above paragraph, some readers may have questioned, “Wasn’t The Stranglers a punk band?” My answer to this is, sort of, but not really. Crucially, The Stranglers were around long before the punk explosion, nascent in the London pub rock scene. Hence, when they released their debut album, Rattus Norvegicus, in 1977, they had much more experience under their belt than the Sex Pistols and The Clash, who also released their debut albums that year.
Punk was a young man’s game. In 1977, when John Lydon celebrated his 21st birthday, JJ Burnel was 25. The classically trained bassist was the youngest Strangler, with Dave Greenfield and Hugh Cornwell navigating their late 20s at the time and drummer Jet Black knocking on the door of 40. Could a man three years older than Paul McCartney really consider himself a punk?
Age aside, The Stranglers were far too accurate and adept to be true punks. Alongside Black’s drumming proficiency, Burnel’s tutored rhythms and Cornwell’s melodic guitar abilities, Greenfield brought keys into the equation, something the traditional punk formation lacked. “None of us were really punk,” Cornwell admitted in a past interview with Classic Rock. “But it was an opportunity. Who cares what they call us? This is our chance to get in through the door. The necessity of adopting a pose appealed to our provocative nature.”
It may just have been The Stranglers’ “provocative nature” that inspired bands like Sex Pistols and The Clash, too. “Steve [Jones] and Paul [Cook] used to come to all the shows, asking questions about how we did things,” Cornwell revealed. Continuing, he remembered an aspiring pub rocker called John Mellor, who frequented his gigs in the early 1970s. “He was in tears backstage after one gig. He said, ‘I want a band like yours.’ The following week, he changed his name to Joe Strummer and was in The Clash.”
Between 1977 and ’78, The Stranglers released three punk-era albums. Conforming to contemporary trends, the albums had characteristics comparable to punk. Still, with compositional complexities and Greenfield’s keyboard melodies, they set the pace for post-punk and new-wave music in the UK. Considering their influence on the punk and post-punk waves, it is not far-fetched to describe The Stranglers as one of the most influential bands of their time.
The Stranglers maintained a strong following throughout the 1980s with a run of studio albums that further distinguished them from any early association with punk. From the experimental concept album The Gospel According to the Meninblack to the sultry pop tones of Aural Sculpture, The Stranglers kept fans guessing while delivering a steady stream of enjoyable highlights.
Like most of The Stranglers’ 1980s albums, La folie was somewhat unbalanced as a record. Despite some dry, uninteresting moments, it threw out a couple of enduring masterworks, such as the brooding title track and the totally unprecedented single ‘Golden Brown’. The latter remains The Stranglers’ signature track and, to this day, their most popular.
The unconventional time signature of ‘Golden Brown’ provides a flamboyant waltz rhythm that is juxtaposed perfectly with the macabre tone of Cornwell’s ethereal vocals. All the while, Greenfield’s harpsichord instrumentation provides textural substance and a certain timeless quality, bridging classical music to punk. As Burnel recalled in a past interview with Q, ‘Golden Brown’ was an intentional cut against the grain. “The whole thing about that song is it really represented us sticking our fingers up to our detractors,” he explained.
Somehow, the band’s label, EMI, failed to discern the song’s accessible qualities and lodged a few objections after hearing the recording. “We had to insist on it being released,” Burnel continued. “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.'”
While one could imagine a goth ironically waltzing off a cliff to the piece, EMI was at least correct in noticing the song’s departure from conformity. Unlike many conventional pop songs, it doesn’t feature a chorus, instead leading with well-structured verses and the refrain, “Never a frown with golden brown”. “They thought, it’s weak, it’s gonna die, it’s gonna drown in the tsunami of Christmas shit, but it didn’t,” Burnel continued with pride. “It developed legs of its own. It became a worldwide hit.”
A month after its release in January 1982, ‘Golden Brown’ reached number two on the UK Singles Chart and performed well across Europe. Resistance to the song didn’t stop with EMI, though, given its romantic reference to heroin. “‘Golden Brown’ works on two levels,” Cornwell said of his inspired lyrics. “It’s about heroin and also about a girl. Essentially, the lyrics describe how both provided me with pleasurable times.”
The Stranglers were no strangers to a bit of controversy, and at every turn, it only served to augment their popularity. Crucial to the success of ‘Golden Brown’ was a perfect storm of duality. The song wouldn’t have been half as impactful if the lyrics had explicitly mentioned “heroin”. In addition to this double entendre, as a pop song of immediate accessibility, it relies on tonal juxtaposition, unconventional structures and lyrics of controversy and, hence, alluring depth.
To directly address the titular question, my answer would be a resounding yes. There are plenty of astounding chorus-less songs in Bob Dylan’s catalogue, and The Velvet Underground’s aptly-titled ode to heroin is a worthy contender. However, by my measure of the word “pop”, which disqualifies ‘Heroin’ and ‘Desolation Row’, it doesn’t get much better than ‘Golden Brown’. Close contenders for the title include R.E.M.’s ‘Losing My Religion’ and Squeeze’s ‘Up the Junction’. I’m sure you will be able to think of a few more, too.
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