Songs About Booze

As we all know, I like to drink. But who would have guessed I like to listen to music as well? Shocking stuff, I know. Anywho, for whatever reason I decided to put my two passions together and share with the internet some of my favourite songs about drinking, drunkenness, and alcoholic beverages - songs which, when my sober mind hears them, I chuckle to myself and mutter "ahh, yes, I have been there", while my drunken mind screams "everybody shut the fuck up, this is my song!" and cranks the stereo. Some of these songs have particular memories and feelings attached to them, others are just general songs about the joy or misery of gettin slizzered.

JACK DANIELS - Eric Church

It seems to me that Eric Church has written a lot of songs about getting drunk and/or stoned either because his lady left him or just for the hell of it. However, I have a certain fondness for good ol' JD - it used to be my anytime drink of choice, later getting promoted to my personal "a man done me wrong" drink, which makes the song sort of pertinent.

HANGOVER - Taio Cruz

Pretty much the anthem for Sunday morning. Nuff said.

SOBER - Pink

My favourite Pink song from back when I used to like Pink (I find her latest hits insufferable. I still bought a tube of mascara coz her picture was on the display, though) To me, it's about using alcohol as an anti-depressant which, you know, I've been doing for the past two years. Pro-tip: it doesn't work. I've been just about as close to rock bottom as I care to go (not due to alcohol, mind, but it sure helped) and back up again, repeatedly, like a yo yo, so pretty much everything in the song reminds me of my own self destructive tendencies.

ME AND THE MINIBAR - The Dresden Dolls

You know when your pitiful attempt to act like not-a-freak to impress your painfully bourgeois lover falls flat on its face leaving you alone to drink yourself into oblivion? It's not a nice feeling.

TEQUILA MAKES HER CLOTHES FALL OFF - Joe Nichols

I don't remember the first time I ever drank tequila, but I do remember the morning afterwards. I woke up in my bed feeling like a piece of shit with the shit kicked out of it. When I finally managed to get myself out of bed, I found myself completely naked from the waist down, no sign of my pants anywhere. Asking my boyfriend whether I was wearing pants when I arrived home from the bar was a pretty awkward conversation, I'll tell ya.

ISHMAEL AND MAGGIE - The Trews

I probably never would have heard of this song, however, at work we have five CDs on a loop day in and day out, the Trews live album being one of them. So I became rather fond of this east coast crying-in-my-beer song.

TIME TO SWITCH TO WHISKEY - Corb Lund

That's how we do it in Canada, boys.

GIN AND JUICE - The Gourds

I thought this was a fairly recent cover, but apparently it's from the nineties, long predating the recent raft of acoustic, folksy gangster rap covers. I'm sad to say, I didn't like this song until after it was already cool. However, I was drinking gin and juice before I knew there was an awesome song about it.

I DRINK - L7

I am positive that everything in this song happened to me one time. The first time I heard it I was all, "waitaminute, I drank a bunch of white russians then puked outside in a parking lot while he tried to kiss me. Was what fuck?" Plus I have a soft spot in my heart for shitty girl-grunge bands. Whatever happened to that kind of music anyway? It was awesome.

THE PIANO HAS BEEN DRINKING, NOT ME - Tom Waits

A jumble of absurdist observations about the denizens, animate and inanimate, of some dingy nightclub that perfectly describes what happens when you drink just a little too much. At first you're like "wheeey I'm gonna dance on everything that isn't moving!" but then three or four double gins happen and you're all "god damnit the waitress is being a dick and that chair tried to trip me", "the urinal doesn't like me" and "I'm not drunk, the floor is drunk. Dumbass" When little things like that start to bother you way more than they should, it's time to go home and go to bed.