Top 25 Songs About Booze
In honor of my two years of sobriety, I thought, what better topic to write about than my favorite songs about booze?
Today I’m more “I Saw the Light” than I am “There’s a Tear in My Beer” but it certainly hasn’t always been that way. I always did whatever I wanted to do, and often times, what I wanted to do was the wrong thing. However, here I am, I can’t change anything and I have a life full of stories to show for it. Some funny, some sad, but all human. I’ll share a few of those here.
Before we get started, a couple of ground rules: (1) This is in no particular order and (2) this is completely a subjective list. And here at Four Lane Road, my opinion is the law!
Without further ado, here’s my favorites, why they’re my favorites and my favorite line.
1. Cigarettes & Alcohol – Oasis
The swagger. The ‘tude. The Gallagher Brothers were everything I ever wanted to be. Especially Noel as a songwriter. “I was looking for some action, but all I found were cigarettes and alcohol”.
2. Drinkin’ Beer and Wasting Bullets – Luke Bryan
Let me be clear, I loathe Luke Bryan. However, if you’re a southern or midwestern bred deer hunter, this song is true. I think most of us can manage to still want to wait on the deer and therefore not waste bullets and scare them off, but I’m sure some can’t help themselves. But yes, I’ve known many a man to drunkenly fall out of tree stands. It’s not as common as the coastal elites would have you believe, but it does happen. “Out in the sticks with the squirrels and the ticks, and my .30-06 and I’m running out of Miller Lite.”
3. Tennessee Whiskey – Dean Dillon
Multiple great versions of this song by Dean Dillon. Recency bias goes to Chris Stapleton over George Jones and David Allan Coe, but the live version with Justin Timberlake is pretty incredible. Not really about booze obviously, but obviously the man knows his booze. “But when you poured out your heart, I didn’t waste it.”
4. Suicide Solution – Ozzy Osbourne
Tipper Gore and the PRMC… leading sheep all the way back in the 80s. Idiots who believe what they’re told without thinking swallowed the crap that this song was a satanic effort to get people to kill themselves. Tipper Gore and the PRMC were doing the Prince of Lies’ work for him. Whether you like or agree with the song is another story, but they were lying to you. The title is a scientific reference, not a philosophical one. Read the lyrics (yesterday’s version of read the clickbait headline but not the nothing burger story). “Now you live inside a bottle, the Reaper’s traveling at full throttle.”
5. Have a Drink on Me – AC/DC
The promise of a good time is always greater than the thing itself. The idea that everyone is pretending to have fun and no one is really having fun. “I’m gonna get so fucked up tonight!” or the female version “Whoo!!!” You’re going into it fooling yourself into thinking this night will be epic, but it almost never is. “Forget about the check, we’ll get hell to pay.”
6. Drink, Drank, Drunk – the Gotohells
Who? You say. Punk band from Florida in the 90s, who have hung around a little bit. Waiting on their CD to come in the mail, used via Amazon. Everything is out of print. Saw them open for, I think the Queers, at Bogart’s around 1997 in Cincinnati. Greaser punk rock. Great stuff. I don’t have the lyrics, but it is on YouTube. Can’t reference the lyrics and other than the tagline, I can’t be 100% sure so I won’t write them down.
7. The More I Drink – Blake Shelton
Very rarely did I get this bad, but let’s just say that it was possible. St. Patrick’s Day in Chicago, sometime around 2007, I was tending bar at the St. Andrew’s Parish fundraiser and drinking. I hate the term “Irish Car Bombs” but I was drinking those, Jameson and Guinness (Bushmills is for the good Protestant people). The cover band played AC/DC and my wife said I danced like “a monkey on crack.” I proceeded to piss in the snow in front of my building (one block from the parish) and then pass out next to the toilet after we got upstairs. “If I have one, I’ll have thirteen, I’m the world’s greatest lover and a dancing machine, I get loud, I get proud and then it gets worse.”
8. Streams of Whiskey – The Pogues
Dude, Shane MacGowan. The great drunken Irish poet of the 20th century, who, only by God’s providence, is still alive. Imagine what he could’ve done if he’d cleaned himself up. Tis a shame. “I am going, I am going, where the streams of whiskey are flowing.”
9. If the River Was Whiskey – Charlie Poole
In my Bob Dylan phase (I still love Bob), the smartest thing I did was buy Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music because that’s where I discovered Charlie Poole. Genius American anti-hero before the image was popularized by folks like Jerry Lee Lewis. “If the river was whiskey and I was a divin’ duck, I’d dive to the bottom and never come up.”
10. Too Drunk to Fuck – Dead Kennedys
No commentary here, the lyrics say it all, “I went to a party, I danced all night, I drank sixteen beers and I started a fight.”
11. Friends in Low Places – Garth Brooks
If Garth was a peanut butter, he’d be Chunky Peter Pan, but I digress. Country music was in (at least) it’s 8th decade by the 90s and yet, this song managed to tell a new story while ploughing very familiar soil. You’re selfish, you’re throwing yourself a pity party, you get drunk and you make an ass out of yourself. Most of us have done it. “Well I guess I was wrong, I just don’t belong, but then, I’ve been there before.”
12. Here Comes a Regular – The Replacements
Reminds me of too many nights walking home across Venice Blvd, under the 10 overpass and across National Blvd after getting sauced at The Wallace. “And everybody wants to be special here, they call your name out loud and clear”.
13. Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down – Kris Kristofferson
Kristofferson is an American legend. Rhodes scholar, military veteran, janitor at a recording studio, and a man who rented a helicopter and landed it on Johnny Cash’s lawn to hand him his demo tape. Under-appreciated American songwriter if there was one. “Well I woke up Sunday morning, with no way to hold my head that didn’t hurt.”
14. Beer Run – Todd Snider
No, not the lesser song you know by Garth Brooks, but East Nashville’s Poet in Residence, Todd Snider. The man who made the criminally under-appreciated, Songs from the Daily Planet in 1994. I used to cover “Alright Guy” anytime I was doing a solo acoustic show. Maybe I should do it again, but anyhoo, I think a lot of folks can relate to this one from their younger days. “Found a store with a sign said their beer was the coldest, so they sent in Brad ‘cause he looked the oldest.”
15. Kiss the Bottle – Jawbreaker / Lucero
Hard to pick a favorite version, but I lean towards Lucero. Hauntingly brilliant song. If Bukowski wrote songs, this is what it would sound like. “Fell from the wagon to the Night Train”.
16. Happy Hour – Everclear
Lots of mentions of drugs and alcohol in Everclear songs. Most of them negative based on Art’s experiences. His previous band, Colorfinger, had songs that would stab you right in the heart on the topic, but by the time he got to Everclear substances were mostly supporting characters in the songs rather than the leading role. This song was a B-Side on the “Heartspark Dollarsign” single and juxtaposing the bouncing major key melody are lyrics like, “hey, have a drink with me, and I’ll tell you what I think, I’d trade my family and my friends for an endless happy hour, yeah, sometimes I talk too much.” It just makes me regret all those nights I was at the bar and I kept saying I’d come home by dinner, then before my kid was in bed, but then stumble in around midnight. I chose the bar over being at home with my family.
17. Drink in My Hand – Eric Church
A celebratory song that in reality illuminates most Westerners’ relationship with alcohol, marijuana, etc. There’s even a wine brand now called “Mom Juice”. There’s nothing wrong with a drink on a Friday after work, but it’s not the solution to your problems, nor should it be something that counterbalances the stress in your life. Personally, I don’t understand the concept of moderation with anything. I’m all in or all out. But, if you can moderate, maybe find a Friday night pick-up basketball game to blow off steam rather than heading to the bar. “All I want to do is put a drink in my hand.”
18. Hitchin’ a Ride – Green Day
Like most people, I made several half-ass attempts to quit drinking before I actually did. It was difficult, especially all those years of selling booze for a living. “Cold turkey is getting stale, tonight I’m eating crow.”
19. High Cost of Living – Jamey Johnson
Knowing this song is at least semi-autobiographical makes me so proud of Jamey Johnson as a man. Knowing how many people have lived this same life without finding sobriety and success like Jamey did, makes me sad. This is real deal addiction. “The high cost of living, ain’t nothing like the cost of living high.”
20. Elephant – Jason Isbell
You meet strange people, have strange conversations and make odd friends when you spend a ton of time on a bar stool. Too often, two lonely people just can’t let go of each other for the night. It’s not sexual, it’s just the fear of being alone. It’s not love, it’s just something you pretend is love because you worry that no one loves you. It’s just co-dependency. “When she was drunk she made cancer jokes, made up her own doctor’s notes, surrounded by her family, I saw that she was dying alone.”
21. The Staggering Genius – Superdrag
Hard not to flash back to the night in 1997 on Superdrag’s tour bus, seeing John so drunk and high he was borderline catatonic, near empty bottle of Maker’s Mark in front of him. Giving me a blank stare as the chaos circled around him. The only thing worse than a drunk, is a drunk artist. Thank the Lord John is sober a long time now. “Tell everyone you’re happy and order up another one.”
22. Went Looking for Warren Zevon’s Los Angeles – Lucero
I consumed a lot of booze in Los Angeles. Including getting shitfaced with Lucero in Hollywood when they were touring for this record (based on how they’re dressed, the same day they filmed this performance). This song conveys the melancholic feeling Los Angeles always gave me late at night. Drunk, happy, in love with some other version of the city as if I was living in the 21st century but somehow co-existing with mid-20th century Los Angeles. As if there was this thin layer where I could see through time. And Los Angeles has some of the best bars in the world. Whether it was a modern spot, like my home away from home, The Wallace, in Culver City, or whether it was old L.A. spots like The Frolic Room, Dan Tana’s, the bar at the Troubadour, Boardner’s, or any number of other spots. I was in hundreds of those bars. My memories are false. Most of those nights weren’t that great, but a part of me still wants to believe they were. “The pretty girls and the crowded streets, Like desperadoes waiting under the eaves”.
23. Goodnight, Hollywood Blvd – Ryan Adams
I heard this song before I first moved to California in 2002. I started going to Boardner’s at Hollywood and Cherokee because I knew that was Ryan’s favorite bar, but I never saw him. Saw Fred Durst and a bunch of other people, but not DRA (including getting drunk with Leif Garrett one night in 2002). It became one of my favorite spots, especially after a show at Hotel Café. It’s rumored to be the last place Elizabeth Short was seen before she became known as the Black Dahlia. I don’t know if there’s spiritual activity in there, but there’s certainly emotional ghosts of events past in there. This song feels like walking out of Boardner’s at 2 a.m. for sure. “Goodnight Hollywood Boulevard, goodnight, see you soon.”
24. Roots Radicals – Rancid
I didn’t grab the bus in Campbell, CA ever, nor do I know Ben Zanatto, but this song is for drunk punk kids everywhere. You started early because you could. You started early because everyone else was. You started early because there really wasn’t a good reason not to. “I started thinkin’, you know I started drinkin’, I don’t really remember too much of that day.”
25. What Milwaukee Made Famous – Jerry Lee Lewis
Perhaps saving the best for last, The Killer. Go listen to this one. “What Milwaukee made famous, made a loser out of me.”
HONORARY MENTION:
Somebody - Memphis May Fire
This song is about sobriety and faith, not booze, but when I first quit drinking, I would rock this song a dozen times a day and cry my eyes out in prayer. I loved being able to tell this to Matty personally and I loved his response, “Man, thank you so much. That’s why we do what we do.” The look on his face gave away his sincerity and, if he hadn’t had broken ribs, we would’ve hugged it out like the brothers we are. Love MMF and love Matty.