The subject of interracial love has come up numerous times in popular music. Janis Ian wrote of a young white girl being criticized for dating a black boy in “Society’s Child,” The Rolling Stones referenced white slavemasters lusting after black slave girls in “Brown Sugar,” one of Stevie Wonder‘s most significant latter-day hits was “Jungle Fever,” the title track to Spike Lee’s controversial film about black-white romantic relations. The Pixies “Gigantic” is about a white woman and black man having sex under a tree. Really.
But there are several other songs where the racial undertones are far less blatant.
Here are a handful of well-known classic rock songs by white artists that fans may not have realized contained subtle odes to (or were completely inspired by) black women…
