Front Page Reviews & AIR

Rowdy, Surly, Remorseful

[ July 23, 2011 | by Jon Busch ]

Illustration by Kathleen Fulton

What makes a great drinking song? The ingredients can be as varied as those in a good cocktail. For me, the recipe isn’t really dependent on any one characteristic rhythm or melody. Sure, there are certain chord progressions, beats and vocal patterns that lend themselves to mug-swinging more than others, but if we allowed ourselves to focus on that, the following list might be entirely filled with Dropkick Murphy’s tunes and “Yo-Ho-Ho and a Bottle of Rum”.

As it turns out, my favorite drinking songs have more to do with lyrical content, complimented by a musical arrangement that adeptly captures that content’s essence. For me, the most appealing drinking songs aren’t those that blatantly glorify or romanticize the drinking process. That’s why you won’t find the Beastie Boys’ “Brass Monkey” or LMFAO’s “Shots” on my list. Instead, I think the best booze-based numbers accomplish something a bit subtler, capturing not only the feeling of drunkenness, but also the range of motives, moods and reflections that so often accompany it. In my mind, they paint a more complete picture, and thus invite greater identification from the listener.

A disclaimer: While I’ve put a good amount of thought into compiling the following list, it is no doubt biased by my own tastes and severely limited by the incomplete spectrum of my own musical experience. With that said, I hope you’ll add your own nominations to the list, and explain what makes your chosen drinking songs special to you. Now, without further ado, and in no particular order, the top ten drinking songs of all time:

1. Tom Waits - “The Piano Has Been Drinking”

With its barely coherent lyrics and almost complete lack of structure, this song captures the haze of drunkenness perhaps more accurately than any other. Lacking the traditional verse-chorus structure, the song plods on and on, never changing it’s rambling tune, much the way some of us do when we’ve had a bit too much to drink. From the disdainful waitress to the cigarette-less telephone, the drunkard offers a litany of complaints, blaming everyone (and everything) but himself for his problems. After all, it’s the piano that’s been drinking, not him.

2. Johnny Cash - “Sunday Morning Coming Down”

Okay, so this is more of a hangover song than a drinking song, but from the very first line, it’s easy to identify with every word of it. Waking up late with the sun in your eyes and a pounding in your head. Seeing your disheveled self, standing in contrast to the upstanding, productive members of society. Sunday is, of course, a day for reflection. From the well-dressed churchgoers, to the children playing innocently, to the women cooking delicious Sunday meals, they act as the collective accuser. They force you to look at your life and wonder what choices have made you into the degenerate loser that you’ve become.

3. George Thorogood – “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer”

Okay, enough kicking ourselves. Let’s see the drinker as the victim; just a man trying to get by in a cruel and unforgiving world. Can you picture yourself sitting next to this guy at a local dive, head down, nursing a Bud? I sure can. I feel like I’ve talked to him a dozen times at the Sports Page Pub on 10-Cent Wing Night. He’s down on his luck. He just lost his job and it has become clear that his sweet, old landlady views their years-long relationship as being worth exactly jack-squat if old George can’t come up with the rent by next Friday. Thorogood invites us to pull up a stool and listen to his sad tale. At a whopping eight minutes, it’s clear we don’t have anything better to do. But the story draws us in, we identify with its protagonist and by the song’s end, we’re damned if we’re going to deny the guy a drink, or three.

4. Alkaline Trio – “Cooking Wine”

Alkaline Trio is well-known for songs about drug and alcohol abuse, but none distill it as simply and completely as “Cooking Wine”, a somewhat obscure track that can be found on a self-titled collection of the band’s early EP’s. It’s a concise tale of a man who, feeling weighed down by life, stops in at a local watering hole to drown his sorrows. But rather than describe that scene, the song fast-forwards to the man’s blunt confession to the person who’s been waiting for him. “Sorry, I’m late,” he begins, “but I was out spoiling my liver.” We share his vulnerability as he explains, “I couldn’t wait. The sun was up for far too long today.” Who needs a specific reason to imbibe when the weight of the world, the tragedy of the everyday, rests so heavily upon us? Though my interpretation is probably incorrect, I’ve always imagined that the narrator is picking up the woman for a date, perhaps their first, making him even more flawed and vulnerable as he confesses, “I can’t see straight, but the two of you look awfully pretty.”

5. Piebald – “Fear and Loathing on Cape Cod”

What’s better than a night of indulgence? An entire weekend of indulgence! That’s the subject of the sadly defunct, lyrically brilliant, please-let’s-not-call-them-emo, Piebald’s "Fear and Loathing on Cape Cod." The song starts, “We took the van one night/ the three of us, contraband, and our bikes.” Sounds like a recipe for success. Over the next four minutes, we’re treated to the increasingly disjointed musings of someone indulging in a dubious combination of drugs and alcohol. One of the most observant elements of this tune is how normal activities like riding a bike or driving golf balls take on new dimensions when one is utterly ‘faced.’ Much like the Waits tune above, the lyrics consist of barely coherent observations of our protagonist. Yet somehow through his haze, we can make a perfectly clear connection.

6. They Might Be Giants – “Drink!”

I realize that with these last two picks I am betraying my penchant for nerd rock. But if you’ve been to a TMBG concert (and I’ve been to 7), you can’t help but love this song. This one hits the musical qualities I mentioned in the intro right on the head, from the waltzy beat to the crowd participation element to the unabashed inclusion of the accordion - an instrument only tolerable to the intoxicated. Its minor key gives the song a tinge of sadness throughout, suggesting that we are resigned to drinking rather than overly excited about it. "Drink!" bridges the gap between the dually celebratory and depressing elements of drinking in record time with the chorus, “Drink, drink, this town is so great/ Let’s drink, drink, ‘cause it’s never too late/ to drink, drink to no big surprise/ but what words rhyme with buried alive?” That ominous final line lingers in your soul as the hops linger on your tongue.

7. Murder City Devils – “364 Days”

Ever wonder what it would be like to keep Santa company on the 364 days each year that he is not working? The Murder City Devils did. That’s why they penned this “open letter to St. Nicholas.” As it turns out, Santa’s life isn’t all jolly frolicking with the elves. The completion of his rounds leaves Santa with an enormous amount of time on his hands - time for quiet reflection in which he is quickly overwhelmed by the sadness of it all. Working their way through a nauseating combination of whiskey, eggnog and wine, the singer implores him, “Saint Nicholas, Saint Nicholas, at the North Pole/364 days spent all alone/ take off your boots, pour a drink/ try not to cry, try not to think.”

8. Neil Diamond – “Red, Red Wine”

Many people are surprised to learn that this song was not originally written by British Reggae superstars UB40. No, it was Mr. Neil Diamond who penned this classic drinking song, and it’s his version that conveys its true sorrow as the singer pleads with his beverage to help him forget his former lover. Thanks to the aforementioned reggae group, the mere mention of this song often is met with a laugh. But the lyrics are genuinely sad ("Red, red wine, stay close to me/don’t let me be alone/it’s tearing apart/my blue, blue heart") and the fact that they are sung to a glass rather than a person makes them sadder still.

9. Billy Joel – “Piano Man”

It’s the song that leaves you wishing that bars like this actually existed outside of Casablanca. Seriously, wouldn’t you just love to have a guy chilling at the piano while you carried on a quiet conversation rather than shouting over some crappy cover band? This bar must be a real dive, because by nine o’clock on a Saturday any decent place ought to be more crowded. Instead, the regular crowd shuffles in with no real sense of urgency, and Billy Joel gives us a quick tour of their broken relationships and shattered dreams. This group of has-beens and hopefuls come together based on their mutual thirst for booze as the Piano Man straddles the line between unbiased observer and fellow failure. After all, he’s not playing Radio City here. The chorus is ideal for a passionate, teary-eyed sing-along, the louder and more slurred the better. Love it or hate it, Piano Man deserves a place in the drinking song pantheon.

10. Murder City Devils – “Rum to Whiskey”

Yes, I’m putting MCD on this list for a second time, but given the number of songs they wrote about alcohol, devoting two spots to them is conservative. It was difficult to choose this final honoree. Tom Waits’s “Sight for Sore Eyes” came close to occupying this position. It’s almost like a more local version of “Piano Man” and reminds me of bumping into old high school acquaintances in the crappy bars that populate my small New Jersey hometown. But after much deliberation, Murder City Devils won out with their hard-rocking tale of love gone bad. It’s almost a contemporary incarnation of Johnny Cash’s “Cocaine Blues,” except this murderer, unlike the one in Cash’s sordid tale, is tortured by regret. While thankfully most of us have not murdered anyone, it’s easy to identify with the brooding, tormented tone of this tragic tale. With the inebriated growling of the lead singer and lines like “She was the prettiest girl in an ugly town,” this song rocks harder than any other on the list. After you’re done basking in its gritty glory, check out MCD’s cover of the Kinks’ “Alcohol”, another runner up for the list, and one of the few instances in which the cover version may actually improve upon the original.

Well, there you have it. If you don’t agree that these are the ten best drinking songs of all time, pour yourself a bourbon and take another listen. And don’t forget to add your submissions to the discussion.

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

Tom Waits, “Sight for Sore Eyes”

Kinks/MCD, “Alcohol”

Beck/Johnny Cash, “Rowboat”

Skoidats, “Beer”

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