| LIST 8 | 12 Songs About Drugs |
1
“Cocaine”
Arguably the most well-known pro-drug song, Eric Clapton's ode to nose candy sounds surprisingly downbeat and melancholy, given its glowing lyrics about the ultimate upper. “She don't lie, she don't lie, she don't lie…”
2
“Cocaine Blues”
Blues and jazz musicians performed lots of songs about drugs. (Even Ella Fitzgerald sang about “Wacky Dust”: “Puttin’ a buzz in your heart.”) East Coast Blues pioneer Luke Jordan recorded at least two versions of “Cocaine Blues” in 1927 and/or 1929 (accounts vary). In one version the Virginia bluesman sings:
I called my Cora, hey hey
She come on sniffin’ with her nose all sore, Doctor swore [she's] gonna smell no more Sayin’ coke's for horses, not women nor men The doctor said it will kill you, but he didn't say when
I'm simply wild about my good cocaine
The other version has ten verses with the same basic structure (a rhyming couplet and the same third line):
You take Mary, I'll take Sue,
Ain't no difference ‘twixt the two.
Cocaine run all ‘round my brain.
3
“Cold Turkey”
When John Lennon and Yoko Ono wanted to kick heroin, they took an ocean cruise, didn't bring any junk with them, and locked themselves in their cabin for the duration. At the end of the voyage, they were clean. Lennon wrote “Cold Turkey” about the hellish experience in 1969, but the other Beatles didn't want to record it, so he, Ono, Eric Clapton, and a couple of other musicians laid it down. The lyrics are heavy-handed and straight-forward (the only clever turn of phrase being “goose-pimple bone”), but what makes the song are Lennon's convincing screams, groans, and panting—sounds that must've been coming from the cabin during the cruise.
4
“Coma White”
Marilyn Manson's songs are rife with imaginative drug references like “my phenobarbidoll,” “cocaingels,” and, “You're kissing me like benzocaine with your sleeping pill eyes.” But surprisingly, Manson has hardly done any songs entirely about drugs. Even “I Don't Like the Drugs (But the Drugs Like Me)” is really about—like most of his output—the shallowness of society, the hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie, and the overall suckiness of the world. The only one that qualifies as a full-fledged drug song is “Coma White,” which is summed up by the line: “all the drugs in this world won't save her from herself.”
5
“Easy Skanking”
One of Bob Marley's many odes to pot, “Easy Skanking” basically recreates the feeling of slowly descending into a warm, mellow buzz. Just in case there's any confusion about what's going on, Marley says: “Excuse me while I light my spliff.”
6
“Heroin”
In this song, penned by Lou Reed, The Velvet Underground captures some of the ambivalence of smack—the way it helps you escape, the way it kills you—but in the end, it leans more toward the positives. Compare the opening lines of the second verse (“When I'm rushing on my run / And I feel just like Jesus' son”) with the opening lines of the next verse (“I have made a very big decision / I'm goin’ to try to nullify my life”).
7
“Hits From the Bong”
Cypress Hill's breakthrough record, Black Sunday, is practically a concept album about chronic. The big hit, “Insane in the Brain,” contains the lines: “I got to get my props / Cops come and try to snatch my crops.” The most memorable line in “I Wanna Get High” is: “Tell Bill Clinton to go and inhale.”
“Hits From the Bong” gets into the minutiae of the act of smoking: “I like a blunt or a big fat cone / But my double-barrel bong is gettin’ me stoned.” Plus: “And then take that finger off of that hole / Plug it, unplug it.” B-Real even offers care and maintenance tips like: “when I pack a fresh bowl I clean the screen.”
8
“Hurt”
Trent Reznor's unsparing song about heroin addiction gained a second life when it was improbably covered by Johnny Cash. The Man in Black stripped down the Nine Inch Nails tune to its bare bones, singing it toward the end of his hard-bitten life. Though Cash apparently was never a smack addict, he did battle the bottle and speed. He proclaimed “Hurt” to be the best anti-drug song ever written. The lyrics are rife with images of waste and decay: “You could have it all / My empire of dirt,” and, “I wear this crown of shit / Upon my liar's chair.”
9
“Lit Up”
While Clapton's “Cocaine” sounds so mellow that it should be about ‘Ludes, Buckcherry's “Lit Up” is fueled by coke. Loud, aggressive, and bouncing off the walls, it's the musical equivalent of snorting a line. When Josh Todd shouts, “You're at ten but, money, I'm on eleven,” you know he means it. If the Medellin Cartel licensed an official song for their product, it would be “Lit Up.”
10
“Mother's Little Helper”
Like Marilyn Manson, the Rolling Stones did very few songs completely about drugs, though their oeuvre is littered with drug references. Their masterpiece Exile on Main Street crackles with lines like, “I need a shot of salvation, baby, once in a while,” and, “Doctor prescribes drug store supplies / Who's gonna help him to kick it?”
Their 1966 hit “Mother's Little Helper” is a catchy, condescending number that rakes women over the coals for their heavy use of tranquilizers in the 1950s and 1960s. These housewives and proto-soccer moms are so bored or stressed out by their domestic chores that they wolf down barbiturates to cope. We can imagine the Glimmer Twins writing these disapproving lyrics as Mick rolls another joint and Keith mainlines some H.
11
“Semi-Charmed Life”
A huge hit for Third Eye Blind in 1997, it might take repeated listenings to realize this song is about methamphetamine. Sure, the line “Doing crystal meth will lift you up until you break” is the giveaway, but between the oft-bleeped words and semi-intelligible delivery, you might not hear it. “Semi-Charmed” contains some of the cleverest lyrics in a drug song, including: “And I speak to you like the chorus to the verse / Chop another line like a coda with a curse,” and, “The sky it was gold, it was rose / I was taking sips of it through my nose.”
12
“Who Put the Benzedrine in Mrs. Murphy's Ovaltine?”
If you think rock songs about drugs began appearing in the 1960s, better think again. Back in those blissful, bygone days that Tipper Gore dreams about, Henry “The Hipster” Gibson—basically a proto-Jerry Lewis who never lived up to his potential—had a hit with a novelty song about an old lady who drinks a cup of Ovaltine every night before bed. Suddenly she's having trouble sleeping, and it turns out that some prankster has been slipping speed into her bedtime drink. The year of this degenerate song? 1944.
Honorable Mentions
“Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds”
Britain banned the third track on the Beatles' epochal Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, John Lennon's “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds.” The rationale was that the hallucinatory song vividly describes an acid trip, and the initials of the title are “L.S.D.” Lennon always denied this interpretation of the song, saying that the lyrics, including the title, were based on a drawing that his then-young son Julian created. In support of this, notice that the imagery fits right in with Lewis Carroll's “Alice in Wonderland” books, which also influenced Lennon's Beatlesongs “I Am the Walrus” and “Cry Baby Cry.” Then again, some have argued that the Alice books are themselves descriptions of drug trips, so maybe we're right back where we started.
“Puff the Magic Dragon”
In a similar manner, folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary have always denied that their signature 1963 song is about marijuana, when signs seem to point to this interpretation: the word “puff”; dragons are generally visualized as green (same as pot); the name of the boy in the song is Jackie Paper; he eventually grows up and has nothing more to do with Puff. 
Drug Quote # 7
“I don't like drugs. I think cocaine is a very bad, habit-forming drug. It's about the most boring drug ever invented. [Laughs.] I mean, it's very bad and very debilitating. I can't understand the fashion for it. ‘Cause it's so expensive.”
–Mick Jagger, 1980