Songfacts®:

• The subject of the Ohio Players' smooth soul/funk jam "Sweet Sticky Thing" is a woman who plays the field instead of sticking with one man. Sax player Clarence "Satch" Satchell told Blues & Soul in 1975 that "the song is a very serious comment on how some women allow themselves to be used and then not really show any real sense of even caring. You know the type of girl that allows herself to be wined and dined for the obvious outcome. But one day they meet someone and almost wish they didn't have that background behind them - but it's too late."
• This is the first single from the band's seventh studio album, Honey (1975). The band's popularity exploded the previous year when they released a pair of million-selling albums: Skin Tight and Fire. "Sweet Sticky Thing" was a Top 40 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 but the next single, "Love Rollercoaster," rocketed to #1 and became one of their signature tunes.
• This was going to be called "Dr. Jazz" but was renamed to tie in with the album title. The album itself was nearly titled Do You Understand but a swarm of tenacious bees from Satch's backyard inspired the honey theme. He told Blues & Soul: "I've been having a running feud with these bees for the past few months and it's a kind of tribute to their endurance. We like to use a 'heavy' type of word for the sleeve because it's so much more powerful. But these bees were almost as determined to get me out of my home as I was to get them out of theirs so I gave them this award for persistence!"
• Playboy model Ester Cordet posed suggestively with a jar of honey on the album's front cover and was completely covered with the sweet, sticky substance for the inside cover. The heat of the studio lights caused her to become glued to the plexiglass she was posing on and it took hours to get her unstuck. The ordeal inspired an urban legend that claimed Cordet was maimed and murdered during the incident, with her screams ending up on "Love Rollercoaster."
• This was the band's third #1 hit on the R&B chart.
• Drummer Jimmy "Diamond" Williams told Fred Bronson, author of The Billboard Book Of #1 Hits, how the song came together. "It goes through a lot of changes, not only musically but rhythmically," he said. "Vocally there's a lot of parts and there are solos and then there's a big ending where chords change and it goes off into cymbal crashes and rolls. Musically it encompassed everything that I could probably hope to play that I've learned in the years of being a student of this craft. Everything that I knew how to play, I played on that record."
• Although he was the band's longtime guitar player, Leroy "Sugarfoot" Bonner had only been their lead singer for a couple years by the time Honey was released, but he took his vocal duties seriously. Williams recalled watching him lay down the vocals for this tune. "We're all perfectionists to a point and you're in the studio to perfect what you're doing," he told Bronson. "Sugarfoot is one of those guys who can go over a lead vocal and a whole verse with all the inflections that he's done [before]… I've caught myself onstage watching this guy instead of performing myself because that's how good he is."