This month in 1986, The Jesus and Mary Chain released Psychocandy, which featured a track that remains one of their most culturally and stylistically fascinating, transitioning from riot-inducing noise terrorists into master crafters of dark, melancholic pop: “Some Candy Talking.” Yet, its slow tempo and lyrics describing a search for a sweet fix soon aroused suspicion, as “candy” was widely recognized street slang for heroin.
The suspected drug theme sparked a moral panic. BBC Radio 1 disc jockey Mike Read banned the song from his broadcast, saying the band were promoting illegal narcotics. Other British stations followed suit, resulting in a nationwide outrage.
Brothers Jim and William Reid vigorously denied the claim. They defended “Some Candy Talking” to the press, insisting that the lyrics represented innocent romantic longing, dismissing the scandal as an overreaction by moralizing radio censors.
The censorship backfired. The media’s sensationalism around the heroin claims fueled popular attention. The single climbed to number thirteen in the United Kingdom, marking the group’s biggest commercial success to that moment.
Critics linked the track to Lou Reed and The Velvet Underground, whose dark songs about addiction shaped the Reids’ style. However, the brothers avoided mentioning Reed at the time to prevent validating the public’s drug suspicions.
Years later, the band reminisced about the affair with dry humor. While acknowledging their lyrics often explored dependency, Jim Reid famously joked that “Some Candy Talking” was banned by the BBC despite being even their only non-drug-related song.
“The BBC banned ‘Some Candy Talking’ because it thought the song was about drugs, which funnily enough is our only song not about drugs.” —Jim Reid, 2015
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Featured image by de Valerie Hicks.
