Sugar Baby

Introduction

References to ‘bootleggers’ and ‘the Darktown Strut’ suggest that the song is set during the Prohibition period. This is of little significance in itself although the references do enable us to infer things about the narrator’s character.

What we seem to have are the narrator’s thoughts as he tries to extract himself from a predicament. A former lover (presumably much younger and possibly self-interested) wants to resurrect their earlier relationship, one which ended years previously. At some points it’s possible to interpret the song as showing that the narrator too is tempted to restart the relationship. For the most part, though, he’s intent on rebuffing her and telling her to get on with her life. Even so, we’re given no reason to suppose that the decision not to resume the relationship isn’t right. It’s just that it would be based on intuition. He can bring no good reasons to bear in support.

As the song progresses, we increasingly learn more about the narrator’s character. We can’t trust him since he’s constantly disguising the truth in language favourable to himself and which belittles the woman. He’s a womaniser, duplicitous and opinionated. He has a tendency to deceive himself. He’s also vicious and vindictive. Much of the time he’s able to convince himself not by sound reasoning but by the conscious or unconscious use of rhetorical language – imperceptibly sliding, for example, between two different meanings of the same word.

The narrator comes across as immoral in a variety of ways. Nevertheless, just as his attitude towards the relationship is ambiguous at times, so is the extent of his immorality. There are indications that he feels both guilt and regret.

The piece comprises eight main sections before the Conclusion:

The first verse
Excuses for not reviving the relationship
Duplicity
Womanising
Love
Incompetence
Rhetorical language
(Creating an illusion of certainty, Self deception, Gratuitous condemnation, Vindictiveness)
Attitude to guilt

1. The first verse

The opening two lines of the song, with their transition from the literal to the figurative, are beautiful! In the second line we learn that the sun and the physical discomfort referred to in the first can be taken as metaphors:

‘I got my back to the sun ‘cause the light is too intense
I can see what everybody in the world is up against’

On a literal interpretation, the narrator has taken steps to avoid being dazzled by the sun. But since ‘see’ in the second line is clearly used metaphorically to mean ‘have knowledge of’, we need to take the sun in the first line as a metaphor for the provider of knowledge.¹

This suggests we take the narrator’s turning away from the light as his shunning an unpalatable truth. And given that the sun had been blinding him, it would seem to be a truth about himself that he has found unpalatable or ‘too intense’. Despite this there’s compensating knowledge to be had. With clearer vision, he realises, he’s better equipped to understand the problems of others. However it’s likely he acquires less understanding than he thinks. It’s absurd that he claims to ‘see what everybody in the world is up against’.

The third line gives us an example of what he’s supposedly learnt:

‘You can’t turn back – you can’t come back, sometimes we push too far’

Taken as addressed to the woman, this line also has beauty due to the heartfelt yearning suggested by the emphasis falling on long vowles in:

‘… can’t turn back’,

‘… can’t come back’,

and

‘… sometimes we push too far’

(or ‘fa-aa- ar’ as Dylan sings it). The narrator is refusing to countenance the possibility of her returning to him. And mysteriously the beauty intensifies as we realise that ‘we push’ is disingenuous in implying, absurdly, that he too has been pushing for her return. Far from actually yearning for the woman, the narrator is rejecting her.

On the other hand, the line doesn’t just have to be taken as addressed to the woman. The narrator could be addressing himself. ‘You can’t turn back’ would express what he takes to be the impossibility of his agreeing to resume the relationship. He’d be continuing to treat it as over. And if by ‘You can’t come back’ he means one can’t come back, he’d be reassuring himself that it’s never the case that someone can retrace their steps.

The final line of the verse,

‘One day you’ll open up your eyes and you’ll see where we are’,

while seeming to be addressed to the woman, could likewise also be taken as addressed to himself. He’d be admitting to being blind in having even considered getting back with the woman.

2. Excuses for not reviving the relationship

That the narrator is just making an excuse for not restarting the relationship can be inferred from his own words. It’s untrue that

‘You can’t turn back …’.

This is indicated symbolically by the fact that turning – and, literally, turning his back – is just what he’s done:

‘I got my back to the sun …’

If he has turned his back so that he’s no longer blinded, then it’s clear that turning is not out of the question. Re-starting the relationship is not as impossible as he’s making out.

Having said ‘You can’t turn back’, he then emphasises this with

‘You can’t come back’

Although the change to ‘come back’ might seem of little significance in itself, we’re reminded of the line when later he declares:

‘Happiness can come suddenly and leave just as quick’

The use of ‘come’ in these lines causes us to see each in the context of the other with the result that the second provides a reason for questioning what was said in the first. It suggests it might not be true that there can be no coming back. On the contrary, the woman’s coming back might result in sudden happiness.

The claims that ‘You can’t turn back’ and ‘You can’t come back’ appear, then, to be less true than the narrator would have us believe. It’s perhaps because the narrator realises this that he says that happiness ‘can leave just as quick’. This seems a poor excuse. Even if the happiness might be transitory, that doesn’t mean it will be. It’s hardly a reason for not giving it a go. Furthermore, his later remark that there’s

‘Plenty of places to hide things here if you wanna hide ‘em bad enough’

shows he believes that if something is desired strongly enough, it can be achieved.

Overall, it would seem that the narrator has done no more than come up with a poorly reasoned ad hoc excuse for rejecting the woman. And the excuse gets repeated when he says

‘Any minute of the day the bubble could burst’.

3. Duplicity

The narrator’s injunctions against turning back and coming back, and his comment about happiness leaving, show him, then, to be at best inconsistent and at worst duplicitous. His penchant for deception extends beyond deluding himself, however:

‘Some of these bootleggers, they make pretty good stuff
Plenty of places to hide things here if you wanna hide ‘em bad enough’

The context is contraband liquor and the tone of the lines makes it clear that for him covert activity is acceptable. He just takes it for granted that one would have things to hide. The idea of hiding things then seems to spark the next comment:

‘I’m staying with Aunt Sally, but you know, she’s not really my aunt’

The implication is that he’s in a clandestine relationship. However, the colloquial addition of ‘but you know’ seems to imply, once again, that such deception is to be expected.

***

Duplicity is also present in the refrain when he advises the woman

‘You went years without me
You might as well keep going now’

The phrase ‘might as well’ in context is absurd. It suggests the options are of equal value – that there’s no real difference for her between coming back and continuing without him. This would seem to fly in the face of the evidence – her attempt to get back with him.

Furthermore, we can take it that what the narrator really has in mind is not so much the woman’s welfare but his own. This seems to be so when in two of the refrain verses the word ‘You’ is omitted so that the second line is shortened to

‘Might as well keep going now’

The difference is considerable. Suddenly the line seems to be addressed to himself rather than to the woman. He might as well keep going now. In other words he’s using her having gone years without him as an excuse for his not resuming the relationship.

***

There are two further differences between versions of the refrain

Sometimes the first line is

‘Sugar Baby, get on down the road’

And sometimes it’s

‘Sugar Baby, get on down the line’

Had either ‘road’ or ‘line’ alone been used throughout, whichever the choice had been wouldn’t have seemed significant; they mean more or less the same thing. However, the use of both suggests that whatever difference in meaning can be found is significant. It might be that ‘road’ is used for its spatial connotations and ‘line’ for its temporal ones. In other words the narrator wants the woman not just at an increasing physical difference from him but for her to go another long period of time without him. It’s a very thorough rejection!²

The other difference between occurrences of the refrain is the variation between ‘brain’ and sense’. In the first four occurrences we have

‘You got no brains no how’

However, in the fifth and final recurrence this becomes

‘You got no sense no how’

Again the difference is significant. The earlier accusations cruelly imply the woman has no ability to think while the final one implies she doesn’t even have any intuitive ability. The narrator seems to have moved from criticising her thinking to writing her off altogether.

4, Womanising

One motive the narrator has for not reviving his relationship with the woman, it would appear, is his desire to womanise. How fixed this desire is is open to question, though. That he’s had, and judging by the present tense is having, relationships with other women is apparent when he complains

‘There ain’t no limit to the amount of trouble women bring’

It’s also hinted at in his reference to the ‘ladies down in Darktown’ and the fact that he’s been passing off the woman he’s been staying with as his aunt.

Despite this, the line might not just be a moan about his partners generally but a sign that he sees the need to give up womanising. If so, it’s plausible it would be in favour of a genuinely loving relationship with the woman, the Sugar Baby of the title.

5. Love

If the complaint about women bringing trouble were a moan about his partners generally, it might seem inconsistent with the triple claim in the line which immediately follows it:

‘Love is pleasing, love is teasing, love’s not an evil thing’

There need be no inconsistency, though, if by ‘love’ he means genuine love’. It might be because he recognises the truth of all three statements, when genuine love is meant, that he’s contemplating giving up licentious love and the ‘trouble’ it brings. The point of making the statements would be to reinforce in his mind the value in giving up the lesser sort of love and perhaps reviving the old relationship.

Love is obviously ‘pleasing’ in a reciprocal way when genuine. Neither is there anything untoward about the claim that genuine love is ‘teasing’ since it’s suggestive of no more than mutually enjoyable playfulness. And that genuine love is ‘not an evil thing’ can go without saying.

The narrator might still think the statements are true, or be prepared to convince himself that they are, if by ‘love’ he means licentiousness. This would be so if he failed to distinguish the two sorts of love and made honest claims about the one which were really only true of the other. Furthermore, ‘Love is pleasing’ might seem true if it were pleasing to him even if not to the other person.

He might have less justification for claiming that love is ‘teasing’. In using the word ‘teasing’ it might be that he’s attempting to cover up for inconsiderate behaviour which the women he’s known would not consider mere teasing. Passing off such behaviour as ‘teasing’ would be an attempt to fool himself that the fault for the resulting limitless ‘trouble’ lies elsewhere than with him. Similarly, ‘love’s not an evil thing’ might be said as a defensive response to scathing criticism of his approach to love. It’s difficult to think of any other reason for saying it.

***

Whatever the truth about the view of love the narrator has in mind, it’s ironic that he uses the word when at his most vicious:

‘You got a way of tearing a world apart, love …’

In this context to call the woman ‘love’ is patronising and devoid of emotion, and it’s in keeping with the way he demeaningly addresses her throughout the song as ‘Sugar Baby’.

6. Incompetence

One of the narrator’s characteristics is his inability to successfully take control. This comes out in his preferring to blame circumstances rather than himself for his problems:

‘Every moment of existence seems like some dirty trick’

Rather than taking control of circumstances, in this case working to secure his and the woman’s long term happiness, he’d rather make excuses or blame non-existent dirty tricks.

His incompetence also becomes apparent in his failure to distinguish between what can be known and what can’t. About the Aunt Sally he’s staying with he says

‘… but you know she’s not really my aunt’

Even if he’s trying to gently let the woman know he’s in another relationship, it seems cack-handed to say ‘you know she’s not really my aunt’; it must be highly unlikely that the woman could know that.

A little later he makes another inappropriate comment concerning knowledge. This time it’s not about what ‘you know’ but what ‘you never know’:

‘You always got to be prepared but you never know for what’

Not only is this obviously untrue in that people usually know what they’re prepared for, but it’s absurd to think one can be prepared without ever knowing what it’s for.

His incompetence becomes even more apparent when we consider the two claims together, for he’s claiming there’s knowledge where there isn’t and no knowledge where there has to be knowledge.

7. Rhetorical Language

Throughout the song the narrator either consciously or unconsciously takes advantage of ways in which language can distort the truth. His rhetorical use of language has a number of direct effects. These include creating the illusion that he knows some things for certain, giving an unduly favourable impression of himself, providing apparent support for his moral condemnation of the woman, and facilitating his vindictiveness. I’ll take each of these in turn.

a) Creating an illusion of certainty

In the first verse the narrator’s confidence that he knows things for certain may well arise from a rhetorical exploitation of the opposites ‘can’ and ‘can’t’ in adjoining lines. When

‘I can see …’

is followed by

‘You can’t turn back …’,

the vastness of the distance between ‘can’ and ‘can’t’ gives the impression there can have been no mistaking either for something lesser. ‘I can see’ comes across as ‘There’s no doubt I can see …’ and ‘You can’t turn back …’ as ‘You definitely can’t turn back …’

That illusion of certainty is reinforced by the repetition of ‘can’t’ in

‘You can’t turn back – you can’t come back …’

which creates the staccato sound of a nail being hammered.

It’s also supported by the narrator’s apparent exploitation of an ambiguity in the word ‘we’ in

‘… sometimes we push too far’

On the surface ‘we’ here can be taken as referring to people generally so that he appears to be making the unimpeachable comment that sometimes people, considered generally, push too far. However, it’s likely that he’s also intending ‘we’ to be taken as referring to the woman and himself. In that case he may well be being dishonest since, as mentioned earlier, he’s provided no reason for us to suppose he has been pushing too far to get the relationship going again, even if the woman has. In short, he’s able to exploit the certainty resulting from the wider use of ‘we’ as camouflage for the lack of certainty where the reference is narrow.

b) Self-deception

There’s no doubt that the narrator deceives himself. This occurs when on numerous occasions he qualifies what he’s saying with, for example, expressions like ‘some’ or ‘pretty’ – as in:

‘Some of these bootleggers, they make pretty good stuff’

While couched in the language of praise, reading between the lines this seems to be saying that even where a few bootleggers do make good stuff, it’s still not that good. Presumably the narrator isn’t more open in his condemnation of the mediocre because having bought it, to be so would reflect badly on his judgment.

The qualification ‘some’ occurs twice more in the same verse:

‘Some of these memories you can learn to live with and some of them you can’t’

Although he doesn’t want to put it explicitly, he means that he has bad memories. The opposites ‘can’ and ’can’t’ seem intended to give the impression that there’s a balance between good and bad memories whereas the truth is that all his memories are bad. They’re very bad if he can’t learn to live with them. And they’re still bad if he has to learn to live with them. The illusion of balance, however, is further reinforced by the double use of ‘some’ to give the erroneous impression that there’s an equal division between good and bad.

A further example of self-deception is present where he says:

‘Try to make things better for someone, sometimes you just end up making it a
thousand times worse’

Not only does the rhetorical opposition between ‘better’ and ‘worse’ create the illusion that what’s being said after the comma logically follows from what comes before it, but so does the shared syllable ‘some’ in ‘someone’ and ‘sometimes’.

And while for ‘someone, sometimes’, the overall claim is probably true, we might say ‘so what?’ For a start ‘someone’ and ‘sometimes’ are so vague that what’s being claimed could never be disproved. In any case what also deserves attention is the fact that attempts to make things better generally do pay off. The narrator is clearly fooling himself if he thinks otherwise.

In verse three a similar effect to the opposition between ‘better’ and ‘worse’ is achieved by the use of ‘good’ and its opposite ‘bad’:

‘Some of these bootleggers, they make pretty good stuff
Plenty of places to hide things here if you wanna hide ‘em bad enough’

The effect is to make the truth of the second line somehow follow from the (supposed) truth of the first. It doesn’t. The claims are irrelevant to one another.

Opposites are again in evidence in verse seven:

‘Happiness can come suddenly and leave just as quick’

While ‘can come’, with its short, sharp sound is assertive, the force is immediately negated by its opposite ‘(can) leave’. The impression of negation is also achieved by the way the long vowel sound of ‘leave’ contrasts with the short, sharp sound of ‘can come’.

c) Gratuitous condemnation

Perhaps because he feels bereft of reasons which could convince the woman that the relationship shouldn’t be revived, the narrator sets about condemning both her intelligence and her morals. The refrain provides an instance of the former when he says

‘You got no brains [or ‘sense’] no how’

The ‘no how’ at the end of the line adds little to the meaning but the repetition of ‘no’ and the way in which the two syllable structure of ‘no how’ matches that of ‘no brains’ both serve to seemingly establish that she really does have no brains.

Also as a way of attacking her morals the narrator uses language featuring the words ‘up’ or ‘down’, and often both. That he should morally condemn her is ironic given his own moral shortcomings – womanising and dealing with bootleggers.

The first occasion he uses ‘up’ is when he’s chiding the woman, or possibly himself, for being unrealistic:

‘One day you’ll open up your eyes …’

The word ‘up’ would be redundant if it weren’t intended to imply that the woman is, metaphorically, looking down. He presumably means towards hell since later he exhorts her to

‘Look up, look up …’

to heaven, thereby implying in each case that her moral outlook is contaminated by the world.

It might seem inconsistent for the narrator, then, to associate ‘up’ with failure when announcing:

‘Try to make things better for someone, sometimes you just end up making it a
thousand times worse’

While he’s presumably attempting to justify his view that reviving the relationship will make neither of them better off, the advice is obviously self-serving. Ironically the word ‘up’ seems to point out what is surely the case – that it would be better, not worse, if people tried to help one another.

Given that the narrator associates ‘up’ with moral approval, it’s an indication of his lack of concern for the woman’s wellbeing that in the refrain he exhorts her to

‘… get on down the road [or line]’.

By not helping her, there can be no doubt about the sort of life he’s condemning her to when we recall that the ‘Darktown ladies’ are

‘… down in Darktown …’

He doesn’t care if by refusing to get back with her he’s forcing her into a life of prostitution.

d) Vindictiveness

The narrator is vindictive and in the process again employs rhetorical language:

‘Your charms have broken many a heart and mine is surely one
You got a way of tearing a world apart, love, see what you done’

He is, for no obvious good reason, blaming the woman for the earlier failure of the relationship. A number of things are significant.

First is the deceptive nature of his wording. The lines imply she has a record of destroying relationships and therefore that he’d be a fool to revive theirs. But what exactly has she done wrong? So what if her charms ‘have broken many a heart’? That’s testament to her attractiveness but it in no way justifies the implication that she’s betrayed numerous former lovers.

Secondly, the viciousness of the accusation,

‘You got a way of tearing a world apart, love, see what you done …’

seems particularly unwarranted given that the woman is attempting to restore the relationship. He should be grateful, one would have thought, that a woman with her ‘charms’ is able to forgive him his faults and come back to him. Furthermore, ‘tearing the world apart’ is an emotive piece of rhetorical exaggeration presumably designed to make her feel bad.

The accusation seems particularly self-serving since by ‘a world’ it would seem to be his world he has in mind. This is because he’s just complained that among the hearts she’s broken his

‘… is surely one’.

If so, he gets his comeuppance since in saying she tears his world apart, he makes himself seem pathetic as if he can’t look after himself.

Thirdly, the presence of ‘surely‘ in the above phrase helps reinforce the vindictiveness. Why, we might ask, is his heart surely one that’s been broken? ‘Surely’ is a word people often use in an attempt to persuade when they’re doubtful themselves. It’s redundant where there’s certainty. If what the narrator’s saying were true, all he need have said is ‘and mine is one’. The rhetorical addition of ‘surely’ suggests that the narrator is consciously making an unwarranted assumption.

Despite this it remains plausible that the woman is responsible for having destroyed the relationship. The point is simply that instead of justifying the view he resorts to using rhetorical language.

8. Attitude to guilt.

The narrator might come across not just as vicious but as hypocritical in criticising the woman for having ‘no brains’. This is because, as he admits, he ‘can learn to live with’ only some of his memories. In other words, he’s incapable of learning to live with them all. However, we might also take the admission to be one of contrition for he’s implicitly admitting guilt in admitting he has bad memories.

If he is admitting to a guilty past, it doesn’t last for long. In the penultimate verse we find him positive about life, despite an apparent inconsistency with his earlier bitter comment about existence being a ‘dirty trick’.

‘Just as sure as we’re living, just as sure as you’re born
Look up, look up – seek your Maker …’

Here the phrase ‘Just as sure as we’re living’ shows him being exultant that both he and the woman are living – and, from what follows, by ‘living’ he seems to mean living morally.

He then – without getting round to finishing what he was going to say – takes it back with respect to her by substituting ‘you’re born’ for ‘we’re living’. She isn’t living morally; the only certainty for her is the lesser one of having been ‘born’. That he doesn’t take back the comment about living with respect to himself implies he’s happy to continue to believe that he is ‘living’ – again in what the context implies to be a moral sense.

That he uses ‘living’ rather than some other expression is important since it reminds us that he has memories he can’t

‘… learn to live with’

– moral failings which he says no more about. Thus, by condemning the woman’s failings without acknowledging his own, he’s presenting himself as a hypocrite.

Conclusion

A major achievement of the song is the way in which it presents a picture of how people think. The language is compressed throughout so that there’s hardly a line that doesn’t carry much more than its surface meaning. The way words and phrases are interrelated so as to create additional meaning is masterful. A major feature is the narrator’s reliance on rhetorical language as a substitute for the provision of detailed examples or clear argument. Devices such as repetition, the presenting of opposites in close proximity, and the use of words with contrasting sounds are typical.

Various negative features of the narrator’s character, including duplicity, inconsistency, incompetence and overconfidence in his own ability, are betrayed in his speech. He makes excuses and attempts to avoid taking responsibility for his problems – the latter exemplified by his characterising existence as ‘some dirty trick’ and his complaining about ‘the amount of trouble women bring’. The misogyny apparent here is evident also in the viciously cruel way he criticises his former lover. His criticising her while failing to condemn his own faults brings out the hypocrisy in him.

On the whole the narrator comes across badly. Nevertheless a feature of the song is its reliance on ambiguity. While for most of the song, and particularly at the end, he seems committed to rejecting his former lover, there are times when he could equally be interpreted as contemplating reviving the relationship. Likewise, while his behaviour seems reprehensible, what he says about the memories he can’t live with suggests he might be experiencing guilt.

Notes:

It’s possible that the sun image used to represent knowledge is taken from Plato (Republic 507b–509c),
It’s also possible that ‘the line’ should remind us of Plato’s line simile which he uses to represent our ascent through four different stages of knowledge (Republic 509d–510a). On this account, in telling the woman to ‘get on down the line’ the narrator would be inadvertently advocating she regress!