Thirty Days of Music, Day Eight

It’s Christmas season so of course I’m going to talk about drugs and alcohol!

Day 8: A song about drugs or alcohol

2020: “Animal Nitrate”, Suede

What’s better than a song about drugs? How about a song about domestics fuelled by drugs! It’s a track that delights in how f*cked up it is, from the customarily awesome guitar work from Bernard Butler, to the singing and songwriting of Brett Anderson. It’s a staple of the early Britpop era for a reason.

Now for my 2025 choice, instinct has told me to keep it Britpop. However I would like to say my instinct is trying to keep things plain and boring so before I go for something different, here’s a couple of Britpop songs about drugs and/or alcohol:

• “Beetlebum”, Blur (Which I’ve already talked about at length: https://asideglance.com/2020/08/21/entry-0-beetlebum-a-k-a-testing-testing/)
• “The Drugs Don’t Work”, The Verve
• “Sorted For E’s & Wizz”, Pulp

Am I forgetting anything? Oh yeah, this lot from Oasis:

• “Cigarettes and Alcohol” (Duh…!)
• “Morning Glory”
• “Champagne Supernova” (probably…)
• “(As Long As They’ve Got) Cigarettes in Hell”
• “The Hindu Times”
• “Pass Me Down the Wine”

Imagine if I’d chosen any of those for today, that’d be a right cop out. But no, instead let’s go for…

2025: “Come Together”, Spiritualized

When it comes to Mr Jason Pierce esq., you are guaranteed songs about love, and songs about drugs. Sometimes even a combination of the two. Truth be told I could recommend you a good chunk of his discography but I’m going to settle what is arguably an outlier on the immortal record Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space.

Most of that record is a quieter, downbeat and placid affair as the tunes ruminate over life as a heartbroken druggy (Unintentionally, mind you, as the story goes that all these breakup songs were written and ready before his girlfriend and bandmate Kate went and married Richard Ashcroft). Then there’s “Come Together”. An out-and-out, balls-to-the-wall, manic mess of wailing guitars and Jason nearly compromising his typical deadpan delivery with each venomous serving of the word ‘f*ck’. It doesn’t take much to work out what this is all about, with Jason singing about apes around the napes and, in one of the most beautifully debaucherous pieces of songwriting, how little Johnny ‘dulled the pain but killed the joy’.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, there’s a reason this album beat out OK Computer and Urban Hymns to be named best of the year 1997 by the NME. Haven’t listen to Ladies and Gentlemen… yet? Right that wrong today. I’ll see you in the morning for Day Nine.