Ode to Intoxication

"Oh Alcohol, I still drink to your health!"

— "Alcohol", Barenaked Ladies

The Rock Star vocalist sings about how great it is to get drunk, high, or stoned — often, but not always, with biting sarcasm (and even if it's intended ironically, that doesn't mean the fans will take it that way.)

When the tongue-in-cheek version is used well, it can double as a less Anvilicious way of saying Drugs Are Bad, becoming Type 1 of the Ode to Sobriety. Compare Drunken Song, when the singer is currently drunk — which can certainly overlap with this trope.

See also But Liquor Is Quicker, Drugs Are Good, Everybody Must Get Stoned, Love Is a Drug, and Addiction Song (for when the song is more about addiction in general).

---

Examples

Music

• Picture this. It's 1771 (or around that year, give or take one or two), and a society of aristocratic drinkers in Britain referred to as the Anacreontic Society come up with a drinking song to celebrate their sophisticated parties involving the consumption of wine and other fineries. A piece was composed and written by John Stafford Smith for their society, named "To Anacreon in Heaven", and waxes lyrical about 'entwine[ing] the Myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's wine'. Evidently, someone must have brought this piece to the Thirteen Colonies, as its music would later be modified slightly for use as none other than the National Anthem of the United States of America! Thus, one of the most iconic and recognisable pieces of music in the world had its origin in the drinking song of an aristocratic wine society.
• Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit" from Surrealistic Pillow is perhaps the most famous drug song of all time, always used in films and TV series to imply such a scene. It does, however, not mention it openly but does so in all kinds of metaphors to the novels of Lewis Carroll.
• Marilyn Manson has two on his second Concept Album, Mechanical Animals, which contains two characters (which would take several paragraphs to explain). Omēga sings "The Dope Show", which is, in-universe, non-sarcastic but is sarcastic in real life (with a large Misaimed Fandom) and Alpha sings "I Don't Like The Drugs (But The Drugs Like Me)" which is much more anti-drug.
• "New Kind of Kick" by The Cramps ("Energine! Barcol! Draino hot shot! Whack attack! Helium! Nitrous oxide! Formaldehyde! Some new kind of kick!")
• "Streams Of Whiskey" by The Pogues. ("When the world is too dark and I need the light inside of me / I'll walk into a bar and drink fifteen pints of beer!")
• "In Heaven There Is No Beer" by Eddie Blazonczyk and Frankie Yankovic.
  In Heaven there is no beer.
  That's why we drink it here.
  And when we're gone from here,
  All our friends will be drinking all the beer.
• J-Kwon's 2004 hit "Tipsy" is about… well, everybody in the club getting drunk. "Teen drinking is very bad", indeed.
• "Got to Get You Into My Life" by The Beatles from Revolver is a totally sincere (and very subtle) song about Paul McCartney's love of marijuana.
• At first listen, the song "Stella" by the pop-punk band All Time Low appears to be a love song to a girl, but then you realize that Stella is actually a beer, Stella Artois...
  I remember how you tasted
  I've had you so many times, let's face it
  Feels like I'm falling in love alone
  Stella, won't you take me home?
• Skold vs. KMFDM's track, "Alkohol". The title indicates the subject matter.
  The devil goes by many names
  Ceremonious libation
  Pure intoxication
  Lets get basted, shit-faced, wasted
• Angelspit's "Elixir" is an interesting case. The general theme is that 'there's a drug for everything nowadays' but it also covers drug addiction — including the chorus, suggested as being from the 'point of view' of the addiction itself. There are a few interesting analyses on Songmeanings.net.
• "High Times" by Jamiroquai.
  You're a rock star
  And some tin foil with a glass pipe
  Is your guitar
• "Drink or Die" by hide. Not sarcastic... sadly so if you look at what later happened.
• (həd) p.e.'s "Bartender".
• Barenaked Ladies' "Alcohol" is a deconstruction. While the lyrics are about how much the singer enjoys drinking, the song later states that he is an alcoholic who would rather drink than feel like himself, and how this has caused problems for him.
• The infamous "Beer" song by Psychostick set to the 1812 Overture/Overture to Carmen..
  Oh, what is that malted liquor,
  what gets you drunker quicker,
  what comes in bottles or in cans?
  BEER!
• BUCK-TICK loves this. Speed (which was originally going to be named Acid with different lyrics, but since Acid and its lyrics were verboten, Sakurai and Imai rewrote it and renamed it to be about an even more dangerous drug) and Heroin, and those are just the really obvious ones. There's plenty more less obvious such as Candy and My Fuckin Valentine and Machine and Jonathan Jet Coaster.
• ''Buenos Dias, Budweiser'', from the The Austin Lounge Lizards. The Spanish half of it is a fairly straightforward example. The English and pseudo-German bits... Not so much.
• Eminem makes a major theme out of these, especially in his early career:
  • "Purple Pills" by D12 is a silly, extreme parody of these (written at a time when most rappers were just rapping about dealing drugs, or smoking weed). It follows D12 as they binge on every drug imaginable on a night out, causing total chaos and death as they go, overdosing, drooling and getting rejected by women. Slim Shady drives while high on Valium, runs over five people (including a pregnant mother of foster children), then reaches the club, consumes several grams of cocaine and starts shooting at his audience for not dancing.
  • "Drug Ballad" follows Eminem getting puke-drunk, making unwise sexual decisions under the influence of ecstasy, and ends with him as an old man babysitting his grandkids while his daughter goes out getting smashed.
  • Eminem's verse in "Shake That" sets up the depraved night out with some drunken Nausea Fuel:
    Pasted, plastered – puke, drink, throw up
    Get a new drink, hit the bathroom sink, throw up
    Wipe your shoe clean, got a routine goin'
    Still got a few chunks on them shoestrings showin'
  • Most of his Relapse album is metaphorical Addiction Songs told through the murders of his relapsing, Medical Horror-themed incarnation of Slim Shady, but "Old Times' Sake" is mostly just a party song about smoking up with Dr. Dre... although many lyrics indicate how scared Eminem is of relapsing into his addiction by being near someone smoking weed.
• Green Day's "Hitchin' a Ride" and "Green Day".
• "Heroin" by Velvet Underground from The Velvet Underground & Nico. "Heroin" is kind of a Deconstruction of this: the music is utterly ecstatic but the lyrics are considerably darker. It doesn't exactly condemn drug use but it doesn't exactly endorse it either. Still, it was utterly scandalous for 1967. "I'm Waiting for the Man" is another song from the same album of similar lyrical content.And let's not forget White Light/White Heat, which at least one critic described as "a commercial jingle for speed".
  • Also a few songs from Lou Reed's solo career, with notable mention to "The Power Of Positive Drinking."
• "Sweet Blindness" by Laura Nyro.
• "Because I Got High" by Afroman parodies this, saying all the horrible things that happen to him because he used drugs.
• "Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off" — Joe Nichols
• "Alcohol" — Brad Paisley
• "Have a Drink on Me" by AC/DC. It's not the least bit ironic; the boys love their sauce. Some considered it in poor taste to include the song on their first album after Bon Scott died of alcohol poisoning, but their response was basically, "Not at all; Bon would have loved this song." (it could also be an homage to him, just like "Hells Bells" is a Grief Song)
• "Ten Rounds with Jose Cuervo" — Tracy Byrd
• George Thorogood and the Destroyers sing quite a lot about booze.
  • "I Drink Alone"
  • "One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer" (a John Lee Hooker sort-of cover)
  • Another George Thorogood example is "If You Don't Start Drinkin' (I'm Gonna Leave)".
• Smoke Buddah — Redman
• We Be Burning — Sean Paul
• Gin and Juice — Snoop Dogg
• Franz Ferdinand has "Ulysses", a song about a night full of drugs and partying. (Actually, the whole album, Tonight: Franz Ferdinand, is about a night of drink, drugs, and partying, but "Ulysses" is the most obvious, what with the line "C'mon, let's get high" repeated in the chorus.)
• Korpiklaani has a bunch of these, mostly without a hint of irony. "Vodka" is probably the most over-the-top.
  Drinking is good for you!
  Not anymore lonesome.
  Drinking is good for you!
  Oh you will feel awesome!
  • Don't forget Wooden Pints, Bring Us Pints of Beer, Happy Little Boozer, Tequila, Let's Drink, and Beer Beer. Korpiklaani *loves* doing songs like this.
• The Irish folk song, "Whiskey, you're the Devil".
• Another Irish folk song example is "Seven Drunken Nights": a man comes home drunk each night and finds things that don't belong to him, and his wife calls him a drunken fool — can't he see it's not a horse/coat, it's a sow/blanket her mother sent her? The last two verses are rather explicit, so The Dubliners version cuts off at five nights.
  • Although Mike Harding's version, set in darkest Lancashire, reinstates the two missing verses.
• "Water is alright in Tea" is another folk song example which lists off the virtue of porter compared to water, wine and tea.
• Whiskey, Whiskey by Tri Yann is an example of a Breton ballad to the bottle.
• "Quiet Whiskey" by Wynonie Harris.
• Alanis Morissette's "On the Tequila".
• Styx's "Light Up" isn't about tobacco.
• Dr. Hook has "I Got Stoned And I Missed It", although that might be more of a Drugs Are Bad example.
  • Which is a cover of a Shel Silverstein song.
• JJ Cale's "Cocaine". Best known for Eric Clapton's version.
• Very much subverted by Ozzy Osbourne's "Suicide Solution" Bonus to double entendre solution such as 'answer to a problem' and 'liquid containing dissolved stuff'.
• Dylan's "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35" from Blonde on Blonde.
• The Finnish Olviräppi (Ale Rap) by Raptori uses the words of a bizarre poem by an 19th century Finnish author. Hearing "Hail, brown malted brew!" set in rap is one of the stranger moments in music.
• "Call The Understudy" in Slings & Arrows is an upbeat song about how the singer is too drunk to perform.
• Reel Big Fish does this... a lot, with varying levels of sarcasm. "Everybody's Drunk" and "Drinkin' come to mind.
• Bowling for Soup's "Hooray For Beer"
• My Little Needle, Cooking Wine, Blue in the Face, Take Lots With Alcohol, This Addiction...and many, many more by Alkaline Trio...
• Old Crow Medicine Show have at least three (it's a kind of Once An Album thing for them)
  • "Tell It To Me": From Old Crow Medicine Show. Cocaine. Also corn liquor, but mostly cocaine.
  • "Cocaine Habit": From Big Iron World. Kinda obvious isn't it? The corn liquor shows up, too.
  • "Methamphetamine": From Tennessee Pusher. Also kinda obvious — although it's mostly negative (being a reaction to the meth epidemic that's afflicted rural America since at least the early 2000s).
    • NOTE: "Tell It To Me" is traditional; "Cocaine Habit" is also a major reworking of the traditional tune of the same name (like really major...like "references to Karl Rove and Elijah Wood" major).
• Gorillaz: "White Light," "Sleeping Powder," and "Tranz," the first one being from Murdoc's perspective and the latter two being from 2-D's.
• Queens of the Stone Age have "Feel Good Hit of the Summer".
  "Nicotine, valium, vicodin, marijuana, ecstasy, and alcohol!
  C-c-c-c-cocaine!"
• If a Love/Hate song isn't about Intercourse with You, it's probably the tongue-in-cheek version of this trope. "Fuel To Run" (about alcohol), "One More Round" (also about alcohol), Mary Jane (where the "joint" getting passed around might actually be a thirteen-year-old girl)...
• Carmina Burana (Orff) features a whole section, In Taverna, dedicated to drinking songs, including a song which lists all those to be found in the pub in question, plus a song from the point of the roasted swan on the spit. The Abbot of Cucany leads the drinkers.
• There's an old song called "Clink, Clink, Another Drink," popularized by comedy musician Spike Jones. Notable for showing the other side of the bottle, personified by Mel Blanc in Sylvester mode.
• Similarly, Jones covered "Cocktails for Two" with all the sophistication of early-period MAD.
• Cab Calloway had "Reefer Man" and "Smokin' Reefer" that were directly this, though a lot of his other songs are also riddled with drug and alcohol references.
  • "Jitterbug" is basically a list of alcoholic beverages with lots of clever rhyming and wordplay, and "Kickin' the Gong Around" is this for opium.
• Asylum Street Spankers have their jaunty, not at all sarcastic ode to Beer, rattling off and dismissing pretty much every other alternative.
• Dr. Dre's debut solo album, The Chronic was named after Marijuana and references smoking weed several times.
• KISS likes "Cold Gin".
  • Also from Ace Frehley is "Snow Blind", "Wiped Out", and "Ozone" from the KISS Solo Albums.
• Oasis, "Cigarettes and Alcohol". "Morning Glory", "Champagne Supernova" and "Lyla" have traces of it too, but it's more unclear.
• We Are Scientists sang about how great it is to stay out as late as possible and drink in After Hours. The sentiment of the song seems to be about the social side to drinking, and wanting to continue drinking with friends.
• Jerrod Niemann's "One More Drinking Song" Lampshades this trope.
• "Tubthumping" by Chumbawamba.
• "Red Red Wine" and "Cracklin Rosie" by Neil Diamond. And although "Sweet Caroline" isn't about alcohol per se, thanks to sports fans (especially Red Sox Nation), it's probably sung sloshed more often than not.
• "A Biologist's St Patric's Day drinking song" for the geeks.
• The Mighty Mighty Bosstones have "Another Drinking Song"
  "The words I'm gonna scream"
  "And getting drunk's the central theme"
• "Nord Mead" is what happens when an Ode to Intoxication breeds with a Filk Song.
• Brazil has quite a few songs about cachaça, such as "Marvada Pinga" ("evil cachaça"), "Pinga Ni Mim" ("drops on me" — Double Entendre meaning both raindrops and beverage drops) and Pato Fu's "Pinga".
• The Offspring's "The Worst Hangover Ever" at first seems like an aversion (what with the title and all), but at the end we see that's not quite the case:
  I've got the worst hangover ever
  I'm crawlin' to the bathroom again
  It hurts so bad that I'm never gonna drink again
  I'll probably never drink again
  I may not ever drink again
  At least not 'til next weekend
  I'm never gonna drink again
• "Standing Sex" and the Jealousy version of "Stab Me In The Back" by X Japan. "Stab Me In The Back" is odd though in that the single version (and most of the live versions) are about gay sex — it is only the Jealousy version rewritten to be an Ode to Intoxication, likely due to label pressure — and Yoshiki finding his own way to flip off the people imposing "no gay" by making the song about injecting drugs. IV could also be interpreted in this way.
• Swedish tradition has snapsvisor that are sung before you take a sip during holiday celebrations. They are usually about how good it is to drink, though there are many, many variations and parodies.
• Classic Swedish troubadour Carl Michael Bellman wrote lots of songs about partying with pretty girls and getting drunk.
• "Just The One" by the Levellers
• There's a reggae song called "Ganja Farmer". The entire song is about the singer's ganja (weed) farm.
• "Dear Booze" by Seth MacFarlane.
• "Radio Junk" by Yellow Magic Orchestra
• Legalize It by Peter Tosh, an ode to marijuana.
• Bob Marley: Easy Skankin (from Kaya), Jump Nyabinghi (from Confrontation), Rebel Music (from Natty Dread) talk in positive terms about marihuana. However despite all that he was actually quite critical of people just being stoned and doing nothing to change the system. He even referenced it in songs like Burnin' And Lootin' from Burnin' ("I must say: all them — all them drugs gonna make you slow/ It's not the music of the ghetto.") and "Pimper's Paradise (from Uprising).
• Reggae singer Horace Andy's "Collie Herb", which is also about marijuana.
• Almost the entire catalogue Brazilian band Planet Hemp — though in their case, to ask for the legalization of marijuana.
• East Coast punk band Gang Green were pretty fond of drinking songs. Their best-known example is "Alcohol":
  We're gonna die when the sun comes up
  We'll drink until we drop
  I'd rather drink than fuck
• Nickelback has Burn It to the Ground and Bottoms Up.
• Shelley West sings "Jose Cuervo," a song about how she loves to go out at night, drink tequila and get crazy. When she wakes up with a hangover and a stranger in her bed, she admits to drinking more than she should. However, the last verses imply that she'll be doing this again.
• "Soul Happy Hour" by 80s indie group The Jazz Butcher
  Whiskey Vodka Special Brew
  All of this is good for you
  Gin sling, Cointreau, brandy sour
  Blot right out! Soul happy hour!
• "Bliss", by late 1970s-early 1980s New Zealand rock band Th' Dudes.
• Inverted in Emilie Autumn's "Take the Pill", which is about terrifying experiences on psychoactive drugs in a Bedlam House setting.
• Far East Movement, "Fly like a G6".
• "Der Trunkene im Frühling" (The Drunkard in Spring) from Gustav Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde.
• Toby Keith, "Red Solo Cup"
  Red Solo cup,
  I fill you up,
  Let's have a party!
• "Old Black Rum" by Great Big Sea.

  So I drank all of my money, and I slept out in the rain.
  Every day is different, but the nights are all the same.
  You never see the sun on the old black Rum,
  But I know I'm gonna do it again!

• Roger Miller's "Chug-a-lug" is about a youth's introduction to alcohol and its rather unpleasant side effects.
• Thrash Metal band Tankard practically runs on this, with about 99% percent of their discography about the greatness of beer, and the other 1% about how being sober sucks.
• The children's nursery rhyme song "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" that gets twisted into "Roll, Roll, Roll Your Joint".
• "Firewater" from Dead Rising 2: Off The Record, the boss theme of Chuck Greene.
• Bobby Bare's "I Like Beer"' (originally written and sung by Tom T. Hall):
  I like beer—it makes me a jolly good fellow,
  I like beer—it helps me unwind and sometimes it makes me feel mellow
  Makes me feel mellow.
  Whisky's too rough, champagne costs too much
  And vodka puts my mouth in gear,
  This little refrain should help me explain
  As a matter of fact I like beer.
• "Lily The Pink" by the Irish Rovers. The name was derived from Lydia Pinkham, who specialized in "medicinal compounds." Verse six:
  Lily died and went up to Heaven,
  All the church bells they did ring.
  She took with her medicinal compound,
  Hark, the herald angels sing.
• The singer in Buckcherry's "Lit Up" seems to have some fondness for cocaine.
• Da Vinci's Notebook's "Another Irish Drinking Song":
  Now everybody's died
  So until our tears have dried
  We'll drink and drink and drink and drink, and then we'll drink some more
  We'll dance and sing and fight until the early morning light
  Then we'll throw up, pass out, wake up, and then go drinking once again
• The start of General Guinness by the Boys Of The Lough starts off spoken: (The whole song can be seen here.)
  It was the pig fair last September, a day I well remember
  I walked around the land in drunken pride.
  When my knees began to shudder and I sank down in the gutter
  When a pig walked up and sat down by my side.
  As I sat there in gutter thinking thoughts I could not utter
  I thought I heard a passing lady say
  "You can tell the man who boozes by the company that he chooses"
  And with that, the pig got up and walked away.
• Presumably, the "Ode to Booze" song played by Accordion Thieves fits this trope. It's one of the few Accordion Thief songs fans wrote lyrics for, and Jick was so impressed he sang it himself.
• Ray Charles's "Let's Go Get Stoned," while ostensibly about drowning one's sorrows in gin (at that time, "stoned" could mean "drunk" as well as "high"), is laced with references to marijuana — and accompanied by a gospel choir, humorously enough. Joe Cocker's cover, famously performed at Woodstock, makes the marijuana connection even more obvious.
• "Alcohol" by gypsy punk icons Gogol Bordello. "And you know that I'll pick up every time you call / Just to thank you one more time / Alcohol!"
• "Drunk In The Spirit" by T-Bone is about a different kind of intoxication based on the spurious claim from Scripture (usually from Acts chapter 2 and Ephesians 5:18) preached by the likes of Benny Hinn, Rodney Howard Browne, and Kenneth E. Hagin, and presented in Pentecostal and Charismatic circles as The Moral Substitute to getting high from real drugs.
  • And speaking of Rodney Howard Browne, "There's A New Wine" is one of his songs, which can also be called a God's Love Is A Drug song.
  • An older example: "I'm Drunk & Real High In The Spirit Of God" by Ada Mae Richards.
  • "New Winos Drinking Song Number One" by Kathryn Riss of Toronto Airport Vineyard. Yep, another "drunk in the Spirit" song, this one used in the Toronto "Blessing".
  • "The Drinking Song" by Linda Gibson-Johnson. Also performed by Tommy Bates.
  • "Take Another Drink" by Scott Underwood. Here it's being "drunk" on the "Water of Life".
  • "Joel's Bar".
  • Tokin' The Ghost by John Crowder and Benjamin Dunn, with their songs including "Holy Ghost Hits" and "Strung Out On Him".
  • And for songs that are more honest with their method of intoxication, there's "Beer Drinking Christians" by Lacey J. Dalton and Bobby Bare from the film Take This Job And Shove It.
  • Same thing with the song "The Lord Knows I'm Drinking" by Cal Smith.
  • Legend has it that various popular Christian hymns were actually drinking songs with Christian lyrics set to their music.
• "The 12 Drugs Of Christmas".
• Sä kuulut päivään jokaiseen is one of the best-loved Finnish tangos and love songs of all time, with its lyrics (translated) including: You belong to sunrise and moonlight / you're the morning dew, the golden sunset, the song of a bird at night / I see a shooting star and think of you / Even if I left everyone else, I would never abandon you. Written by a heavy-weight alcoholic, the target of its affections is thought to be alcohol and not a person.
• "Drinkin' To Drink" by Christian Kane.
• Lil Wyte has a bunch of these: "Drinking Song", "Smoking Song", "Smoke My Dro", "Get High", "Acid", "Oxy Cotton".
• "Have Some Madeira, M'Dear" by Flanders and Swann is an Ode to Not Really Intoxication, Honest, in which a Dirty Old Man tries to convince The Ingenue that drinking Madeira isn't really drinking. Also a case of But Liquor Is Quicker.
• In a roundabout way, Luke Bryan's "Rain is a Good Thing." Because rain makes corn, and corn makes whiskey, and whiskey makes his girlfriend feel a little frisky ...
• "Get High" by Brandy Clark.
• Black Sabbath's "Sweet Leaf" (weed), "Snowblind" (cocaine), and others. Not all their drug songs are pro-drug, however; "Hand of Doom" is an anti-heroin song about people dying of heroin addiction.
• Older Than Radio: "Little Brown Jug" was written in 1869 by Joseph Winner.
• "I’d Rather Have a Bottle in Front of Me (Than a Frontal Lobotomy)" by Dr. Rock AKA Randy Hanzlick, M.D. has long been a favorite of the Dr. Demento radio-show.
• "Advertisement (Another Irrelevant Intentional Suicide)" by Roy Harper is all about getting stoned, and includes a defiant Take That! to the DS:^note Americans: think DEA
  Well, you've bust me once
  You've bust me twice
  But you'd have to top me
  To finally stop me
  From rolling my dice
  I'm really stoned, I'm really stoned
  Permanently out my bone
  I'm really stoned...
  • Also, the album sleeve is designed to look like an unfolded packet of orange Rizlas. The title of the album is "Jugula" (sic) because Roy Harper can't spell "jugular"; it is not known if this orthographical failure is due to him being really stoned.
• "Bartender" by Lady Antebellum.
• "Whiskey River" by Willie Nelson.
• "Thunderbird" by ZZ Top.
• "Intoxicated", "I Need Another Drink", and "Get Stoned" by Hinder.
• "Dixie Fried" by Carl Perkins.
• The British comedy duo Hale And Pace did a comedy version entitled "The Drugs Song". Some trope-worthy moments:
  My mate Dave had LSD...(Beat,Blank Stare)...E-I-PQZ-apostrophy...
  Look! There is a nine-legged spider in scuba gear!
• Monty Python extended their Bruces philosophy sketch for their The Monty Python Matching Tie And Handkerchief album to include a song on noted philosophers getting toasted.
• "Purple Haze" from Are You Experienced by Jimi Hendrix portrays an acid trip.
• "D-R-U-N-K" by David Allan Coe.
• "Smoke A Little Smoke" by Eric Church.
• Beastie Boys' first albums Licensed to Ill and Paul's Boutique are full with lyrical references and praisings of beer and marihuana.
• "Raise 'Em Up" by Goddamn Draculas, about drinking in a social setting (which could either be a party or a rock concert). It does have a brief allusion to hangovers, however: "Tonight is the night for pleasure / Tomorrow is the day for pain".
• Keith Whitley's "Tennessee Courage" ("Now my good friend Jack Daniels stands tall on the shelf/And he'll go to war with my troubles"). Becomes Harsher in Hindsight when you realize that Whitley died of alcohol poisoning just months after recording this song.
• Fay McKay had "The Twelve Daze of Christmas", a parody of the obvious Christmas carol with alcoholic drinks subbed in for the usual gifts.
• "Marijuana" by The Fugs from It Crawled Into My Hand, Honest lists all the various names of marihuana, while being backed by a Gregorian chant.
• Old 97s' aptly-titled "Let's Get Drunk & Get It On", doubling as an Intercourse with You song.
• "Black Out" by IU is about getting very drunk and falling in love with random passerbys.
• "Fire It Up" by Disturbed.
• "Drinkin' Wine Spo-dee O-dee" by Sticks McGhee and later more famously covered by Jerry Lee Lewis.
• "Willie Brewed a Peck of Maut" by Robert Burns praises binge drinking.
• "Bitches n Marijuana" by Chris Brown & Tyga featuring ScHoolboy Q is about... take a wild guess.
• "Smokin' and Drinkin'" by Miranda Lambert is both a drinking song and a pot smoking song.
• "I Wanna Be Sedated" by The Ramones. Though it's more "getting knocked down it's preferred to this bore!"
• "Came Thru/Easily" by Chuck Inglish featuring Ab-Soul and Mac Miller. Each rapper contributes a verse that basically gives an ode to how great it is to do drugs.
• "Why Don't We Get Drunk" by Jimmy Buffett doubles as an Intercourse with You song.
• Subverted with "Chandelier" by Sia, which is about a depressed woman who uses hard partying and drinking to drown her sorrows.
  One, two, three, drink
  Throw them back 'til I lose count.
  I'm gonna swing from the chandelier, from the chandelier
  I'm gonna live like tomorrow doesn't exist.
  I'm gonna fly like a bird through the night, feel my tears as they dry.
  I'm gonna swing from the chandelier
• "Drinkin' and Druggin' and Watchin' T.V." by Bobby Bare.
• "And She Was" by Talking Heads is fairly transparently an account of a young woman's essentially pleasant (probably) first experience with LSD or another psychedelic. This is pretty well borne out by the video.
• Tad's "Jack Pepsi" is about an incident where Tad Doyle and a friend went on a drunken joyride in his friend's father's new pickup truck that culminated in the two of them going straight through the ice on Lake Lowell in western Idaho after doing donuts on the ice while chugging a bottle of Jack Daniel's.
• Delirium by Zomboy.
• Famously, "There She Goes" by The La's is a well-disguised ode to heroin. Well, supposedly. This largely stems from rumors started by the press, and the band themselves have denied this.
• Green and Purple by Kritikal, a parody of Wiz Khalifa's Black and Yellow, is entirely about marijuana.
  Ah huh, you know what it is
  Every spliff I roll, I roll it big
  Ah huh, screaming that's skunk
  When I roll up the blunt, that's skunk
  See me in your town with the pounds of the haze
  Green and Purple, Green and Purple, Green and Purple, Green and Purple
  If you smoke this shit you'll be high for days
  Green and Purple, Green and Purple, Green and Purple, Green and Purple
  • Wiz Khalifa himself is a well know weed rapper, with several songs on the topic, mixtapes like Kush and Orange Juice and [[Burn After Reading Burn After Rolling and even a Stoner Flick called Mac And Devin Go To Highschool with Snoop Dogg
• "My Medicine," by The Pretty Reckless. The singer is strung out on something, possibly given the name a prescription drug. It's ambiguous but it doesn't seem that the singer considers it a positive experience. The (very NSFW) music video makes it seem like it's about a rock star who's suffering burnout from a sex, drugs, and rock n roll lifestyle.
• Gustav Mahler's symphonic song cycle The Song of the Earth opens with the massive "Drinking Song of Earthly Woe". The chorus is "Life is dark, death is dark", and we drink to forget that life is full of woe, and then we die. The cycle also contains a more upbeat ode to intoxication, "The Drunkard in Spring":
  If life is but a dream,
  why work and worry?
  I drink until I no more can,
  the whole, blessed day!
• "Drunk at the MCG" by Greg Champion, a parody of "Born in the USA" by Bruce Springsteen, about a Cricket fan's experience of alcohol at matches.
• A Drinking Song by The Divine Comedy seems to explore all aspects of drunkenness, including the social aspect of drinking with friends, drunken brawls, and talking a little too much about yourself.
  Earnest young man
  With an unhealthy tan
  Puts a drink in my hand
  And says "I understand
  You're in search of the place
  To continue the chase
  Of the heavenly taste.
  I suggest, in that case,
  You all come with me
  To my place by the sea,
  Where the glasses shall be
  Overflowing with free
  Alcoholic delights,
  And free love, if you like,
  For what point has this life
  If you can't realise your dreams!"
• Virtually half of the output of German fun punk band Die Toten Hosen ...but it's fun punk, what did you expect?
• Likewise "Saufen" by the other German fun punk band^note Actually, Germany has more than two. Die Ärzte ...although them being more meta, you might suspect it's sarcasm.
• Most Alestorm are about wenches and mead. Some of the best examples are "Rum", "The Famous Ol' Spiced" and "Drink".
• Heather Alexander's "Pour Your Brother" is a folk song about drinking at a pub.
  Pour your brother one more round
  Pick each other off the ground
  Let another chorus sound
  Pour your brother another round
• Hollywood Undead's "Comin' In Hot" is all about heavy drinking and flirting with women at a club.
• Lady Gaga gave us "Mary Jane Holland" on her album ARTPOP.
• "Jack, I'm Mellow," a 1938 song by Trixie Smith, which appears as the theme tune for the Netflix series Disjointed.
• Ze Records supergroup Aural Exciters are probably most remembered for their ode to the effects of amyl nitrate, "Emile (Night Rate)".
• FIDLAR's "Cheap Beer": "I! Drink! Cheap! Beer! So! What! Fuck! You!"
• Mötley Crüe's "Smoke the Sky", an ode to marijuana.
  B.C. hailed it heaven, I inhaled it, too
  Really T.H.C.
  When inside we'll smoke the sky
• Boston's "Smokin'", about the green stuff.
  Smokin', smokin'
  We're cookin' tonight, just keep on tokin'
  Smokin', smokin'
  I feel alright, mamma I'm not jokin', yeah
• "White Lady White Powder" by Elton John is hardly subtle about being a love song to cocaine.
• Tessa Violet's "Wishful Drinking" is about using alcohol to escape one's demons and to help with "focus", as well as the distant, yet constant fear of drowning under addiction and denial that this is what's starting to happen.
  This is not a problem if I don't want it to stop
  Can't call it a problem if I never let a play drop
  This is not a problem if I don't want it to stop
  Don't call it a problem; it's the only thing that I still got
• "I'll Be Stoned For Christmas" from Bob Rivers' White Trash Christmas.
• Sailors singing about drinking is one of the oldest traditions in human history; with examples including the famous old sea shanty Drunken Sailor and the second verse of the United States Navy's fight song Anchors Aweigh.
• Psy and Snoop Dogg's 2014 collaboration, "Hangover," features just much about the drinking and smoking as it does the aftereffects that give the song it's title:
  Drink it up and get sick
  Bottom's up, get wasted
  Pour it up, drink it up, live it up, give it up
• "My Bag" by Lloyd Cole is an ode to cocaine highs. (But given that Cole is a Snarker from Hell...)
• "Nie pij, Piotrek" by Kuba Sienkiewicz, a song about when it's okay to drink and when it's not:
  Pete, don't drink on Mondays,
  you just ain't tough enough.
  Mondays you gotta fight,
  and you can't when sloshed.
• "Don't Threaten Me with a Good Time" by Panic! at the Disco.
  Champagne, cocaine, gasoline
  And most things in between
  I roam the city in a shopping cart
  A pack of Camels and a smoke alarm
  The night is heating up
  Raise hell and turn it up
  Saying, "If you go on, you might pass out in a drain pipe."
  Oh yeah, don't threaten me with a good time
• "I'm OK" by Little Big, in which the singers describe getting thoroughly plastered following a stressful workday, but don't worry, as the refrain assures us, "I'm OK, I'm not alcoholic."
• Michael Trapson's "High", a weed-themed Affectionate Parody of Michael Jackson's "Human Nature".
• They Might Be Giants: "Drink!" from Mink Car is a somewhat ironic example, since it also has lyrics about cleaning up after a night of drunken revelry ("I'll take back my piñata, it's wasted on you / Just spinning that pool cue all over the room")
  Let's drink, drink, this town is so great
  Drink, drink, 'cause it's never too late
  To drink, drink, to no big surprise
  But what words rhyme with "buried alive"?
  What words rhyme with "buried alive"?
• Here's To Us by Halestorm is about getting drunk with a friend or lover to celebrate after a hard week.
• Tom Petty's "You Don't Know How It Feels", with its famous line:
  Let me get to the point, let's roll another joint.
• Neil Young's "Roll Another Number (For The Road)" is about marijuana.
• Cheech & Chong's "Marijuana".
• Billy Currington's "Pretty Good At Drinkin' Beer".
• The title track from Foreigner's second album, Double Vision, sees the singer asking someone to "fill [his] eyes with that double vision", the rest of the lyrics making it clear that the singer has serious substance abuse problems but doesn't care.
• Sentenced has two, both instrumentals: "0132" is a track meant to evoke the joyous elation of getting drunk with Koskenkorva Viina, its title being the trade code for the brand of the liquor itself, and "The Golden Stream of Lapland" is about the awesomeness of Lapin Kulta ("Lapland Gold") beer.
• The traditional Colombian song "El Sanjuanero" (St. John's Festivities Song) by Anselmo Durán Plazas, as written in the lyrics by Sofía Gaitan De Reyes, is about getting plastered with aguardiente and dancing joropo, and how the dancing deals with the prospective hangover.
• Brothers Osborne did this with "Rum" (stay home and drink rum in the kiddie pool with your lover) and "Shoot Me Straight" (exhort the bartender to give him the strongest drink possible to drown his sorrows).
• The Filk Song "The Ballad of Transport 18" is about a stranded spaceship whose cargo is 12 tons of beer. Naturally, the crew takes the opportunity to drink it.
• D'Angelo's "Brown Sugar" refers to marijuana as if it were a girl.
• "Home For A Rest" by Canadian folk band Spirit of the West is a rousing tune about getting drunk while on vacation in the UK.
• Way too many Folk Metal songs to cover here, with (as mentioned above) Korpiklaani being a major offender. They have at least one song about drinking on each album and pretty much all with only Korven Kuningas, their fifth studio album, having no song that has to do with drinking. Also, Manala only contains a song that's only partially about drinking, since it's about witchcraft and making someone eat, as the title says, "Soil of the corpse" which seems to be slipped into their drink. And the lyrics only mention drinking in passing, with more focus being on the witchcraft.
  • Though the sixth album Karkelo (older Finnish for a celebration or a party) by having a record number of four songs about drinking (though the last one, Kohmelo meaning hangover in slang, is an instrumental song. But by the virtue of its name, it does kind of show the negative side of drinking, even if not musically.
  • Then there's Moonsorrow with Pakanajuhla.
  • Like was said above, there are just too many to list. And some don't even necessarily have a name that would indicate them being an ode to intoxication.
• Total Devastation has an album full of songs praising cannabis, such as "Mighty Clouds Of Smoke", "Fat Blunt Caper", and "Cloud Nine".
• Three 6 Mafia's "Sippin on Some Syrup" opens up with:
  Yeah, nigga, y'all know the motherfucking sco', y'all non-snorters,
  Non-smokers, non-sippers, get the fuck up out of here, bitch
  Nigga, it's some sipping-ass, pouring up-ass, smoking-ass,
  Getting high-ass niggas in here, Three 6, UGK, nigga,
  We putting it down in this motherfucker
• Cold Chisel's "Cheap Wine" is about a man who's left his career and ditched his lover to sit on the beach and drink...but it's noticeably not a sad song, the chorus is pretty upbeat, the narrator seems to be perfectly fine with his circumstances, and songwriter Don Walker describes it as being "about someone who's on the skids, but still having a great time."
• Eric Hutchinson's "happy like a chicken with his head cut off" is about his experience with the anti-depressant Prozac, specifically how it eliminated high and low emotions and forced him to default to a sort-of-happy but detached state of mind (i.e. a chicken with his head cut off).
• 1980 by Dirt Nasty is an over the top tribute to cocaine, which Rex has said came to him as an idea because all the rappers rap about selling cocaine, but no one ever does a song in the perspective of the buyer.
• Inverted by Nanowar of Steel's "Sober" in a send-up of Alestorm: the song is an ode to sobriety, where the pirates choose tea, juice, or milkshakes over grog.
• Don Bowman's "Wildwood Weed" is about the narrator and his brother doing marijuana.
  Big 'ole puff of that wildwood weed next thing you know
  You're just wand'ring 'round behind the little animals

Other

• 1934 musical film Murder at the Vanities includes an entire number, "Sweet Marijuana", about, well, how great marijuana is.
• Our Miss Brooks: In Old Clothes For Party Miss Brooks is annoyed by a drunk who interrupts her telephone party line call. When she finally gets rid of him, Miss Brooks sings a parody of Comin' Through The Rye:
  Miss Brooks: When a buddy meets a buddy, he's had too much rye!
• Older Than Feudalism:
  • Horace's Ode to a Wine Jar.
  • China's Tang Dynasty had Eight Immortals of the Wine Cup. "Bring in the Wine" by Li Bai was featured in Drunken Master with Wong Fei-hung and Beggar So trading verses.
• Conversational Troping in Maskerade, when Nanny Ogg claims that light opera is when everyone sings in foreign and it means "Beer! Beer! Beer! I like to drink lots of beer!" In Carpe Jugulum we're given an example; Nanny has a beer stein that plays "Ich Bin Ein Rattarsedschwein" (I Am A Rat-Arsed Swine) from The Student Horse.
• "Green Leaves", Lazy Smurf's parody of "Greensleeves" and "What Child Is This" that is sung about the joys of smoking smurfnip in the Empath: The Luckiest Smurf story "A Haunted Christmas". Also in the same story is "Streams Of Sarsaparilla Ale", a parody of "Good King Wenceslas".
• Shakespeare writes two into Othello, "A Soldier's Life" and "King Stephan".
• J. R. R. Tolkien writes a song called "A Drinking Song" into The Fellowship of the Ring.
• The Polish heroicomical poem Monachomachia (literally "war of monks". It describes, in language better suited for describing epic ancient battles, a theological dispute degenerating into a giant brawl) contains a piece praising the "love of the glass" after a cup of wine is used to end the brawl by starting a binge. (as you can guess, the author, himself a priest, didn't think much of the morality in the monasteries of his time)
• A video game example — the first song that you can hear in the 2004 version of The Bard's Tale is 'Beer, Beer, Beer', an ode to the man who created beer there. It's even sung by the town drunks, and you can sing along, too, if you like.
  A barrel of malt, a bushel of hops,
  You stir it around with a stick,
  The kind o' lubrication
  To make yer engines tick!
  Forty pints of wallop a day
  Will keep away the quacks!
  It's only eightpence ha'penny,
  And one and six in tax!
• Referenced in the novel The Long Ships. While serving as a galley slave, Orm's oarmate is an Arabic poet named Khalid, who wrote one. It was considered a critique of Islam, ad he was found guilty of blasphemy and sent to the galleys. He tries to write an Ode to Sobriety while rowing, but he finds it very difficult to find good things to say about water and lemon juice.
• Most of the operetta The Student Prince. "Ein zwei drei vier! Lift your stein and drink your beer!"
• "Name Your Poison" from The Return of Captain Invincible is one of these. It also doubles as Break Them by Talking, as it's sung by a villain trying to tempt his old nemesis off the wagon.
• The duet and chorus aria "Libiamo ne' lieti calici" ("Let's drink from the joyful cups") from Verdi's La Traviata, finishing off with everyone singing. It serves as something of a Meet Cute for the central couple.
  "Let's enjoy the wine and the singing,
  the beautiful night, and the laughter.
  Let the new day find us in this paradise"
• In The Saga of Darren Shan, the titular vampire gets drunk at a vampire festival and sings an ode to ale, in what's probably the second cutest example on this page, the first being the Traviata example above.
• In the Kingdom of Loathing, the "Ode to Booze" is an actual buff that players can have cast upon them by an Accordion Thief. It actually increases the benefit (in Adventures) from drinking all types of booze items. Naturally, the players took it upon themselves to provide lyrics To the Tune of... the Ode to Joy.
• In One Piece, "Bink's Sake", is a typical pirate drinking song. Lyrics with English translations are here.
  • Though, it is somewhat a bittersweet song given that it was the last thing Brook's crew sang before their deaths. The song itself is pretty happy, but for most OP fans it will bring at least a single tear to the corner of the eye when they are reminded of Brook's former crew, the Rumbar Pirates.
• The Rubaiyat Of Omar Khayyam. From the Le Gallienne translation:
  Drunkards! So be it, yet if all were wise,
  All would be drunk like us, with dreaming eyes:
  Poor sober world, so doleful all the day,
  Leave mosque and mart, and join our Paradise.
  There are no sorrows wine cannot allay,
  There are no sins wine cannot wash away,
  There are no riddles wine knows not to read,
  There are no debts wine is too poor to pay.
• In The Simpsons, when Homer is forced to swear off alcohol for a month, he sings a version of "When I Was Seventeen" with altered lyrics about getting drunk as a young man.
  When I was seventeen,
  I drank some very good beer,
  I drank some very good beer
  I purchased with a fake ID.
  My name was Brian McGee,
  I stayed up listenin' to Queen
  When I was seventeen.
• Hudson & Landry's "Ajax Liquor Store" and its follow up "S.O.B. (Short On Booze)" are of the spoken comedy variant.
• It seems like every single book of the Redwall series includes somebody getting drunk and singing about it.
• Averted by Slim Dusty's "Duncan", which is a drinking song minus the intoxication:
  I love to have a beer with Duncan,
  I love to have a beer with Dunc,
  We drink in moderation,
  And we never, ever, ever get rolling drunk!
• The Playground Song "Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer" strongly suggests this; any gathering where that many alcoholic beverages may be consumed has certainly got to leave people very well intoxicated.

---