"Sugar Daddy" is a song by British pop group Thompson Twins, which was released in 1989 as the lead single from their seventh studio album Big Trash. The song was written and produced by Tom Bailey and Alannah Currie. "Sugar Daddy" reached number 28 on the US BillboardHot 100 (their final Top 40 hit in the US) and number 97 in the UK Singles Chart.[2][3]
Background
In a 1989 interview on MuchMusic, Bailey described the song as sounding "quite sugary" but added "the message is quite disturbing". He added, "It's about sexual manipulation, affection traded for power, and as with all those sort of power-gain relationships, there's always a sugar coating, so that's why the song is so sugary but the message so bizarre."[4]
Music video
Speaking on MuchMusic, Currie revealed some of the unused sequences of the video, "The video was funny. I wanted to be the angel of death in it, with a black guitar and wings, but I kept getting stuck up there and screaming to get down, so we had to lose some of those shots. And then they built this enormous 12 foot skirt, I wanted to have these men coming out from under my skirt, and they edited that down to make it a bit more acceptable. I wanted to be the original hell's angel, it didn't quite come off. I always get disappointed by our videos."[4]
Critical reception
On its release, Music & Media considered the song "playful and catchy", with "more raunch than their previous material".[5] Phil Cheeseman of Record Mirror commented, "The Twins return to what they're best at - bad pop/rock singles with inane lyrics, those bursts of guitar and pressing the button on the synthesiser marked 'orchestral boom'."[6]
Billboard described "Sugar Daddy" as "refreshing pop" and a "jaunty piece of ear candy".[7] Stephanie Brainerd of Cash Box commented, "This is your average neo-disco synthesized dance mix, and really, it's not a bad one, but from the Thompson Twins? This tune might possibly fare well on the dancefloor, but I don't believe it's their best effort."[8]
In a review of Big Trash, Australian daily newspaper The Age noted the song as one of the album's "superb creations", adding that it was a "pleasant single, though not as amusing as the observant title track".[9]
