HecklerPlay: Our Favourite Songs About Drugs

On Monday, in an interview with Guardian Music, The Shamen's Mr C revealed that their 1992 hit single Ebeneezer Goode was about ecstasy. Who would have thought it?

To celebrate this revelation, we were going to have a list of our favourite songs that seem to be about one thing, but are actually about another. We soon realised that almost all pop music is actually about sex whilst pretending to be about ding-a-lings, lollipops, divine hammers, relaxing, and the banging of gongs.

So we thought it would be easier to list our favourite songs about drugs.

Unfortunately it turned out that far from being the creatively fertile land we thought it might be, most songs about drugs are appallingly self-indulgent and use embarrassingly clunky metaphors. It also transpires that there are a lot of Red Hot Chili Peppers songs about drugs. We hope we've avoided the former and we've definitely avoided the latter.

So what did we learn? Not much really except that the more weed Cypress Hill smoked, the more boring they got while the more smack the Rolling Stones took the more interesting they became.

Do we need to remind you that drugs aren't clever and can be a VERY BAD THING? If we do, then you're an idiot as everyone knows that.

The problem is that if people didn't find them to be jolly wizard fun (at least for a bit) then we wouldn't have ended up with these beauties.

MF Doom – My Favourite Ladies

Not a great deal of regret going on here where our man puts his anger to one side and talks about a series of ladies that he has loved and how they made him feel.

Queens of the Stone Age – Feel Good Hit of the Summer

The Queens shun the dual meanings of MF Doom, and simply grab the shopping list from the fridge and then sing through it. Welcome to the Queens' world where the words 'drug' and 'problem' never sit adjacent to each other.

Lemonheads – My Drug Buddy

On the other hand, the phrase 'drug problem' is one that Evan Dando later came well acquainted with, but before then he wrote this. A sweet paean to getting messed up with a friend which is all about drugs being the glue which can sometimes cement a relationship.

(This is a live version because some idiot disabled the embed code on the single version)

Ghostface Killa – Kilo

One of hip-hop's great storytellers, Ghostface is the Scorcese of rap. He takes you into a world with actions and consequences. Here he soundtracks the production required to supply some of the other artists on this list.

Spiritualized – I Think I'm In Love

Has Jason Pierce ever written a song that wasn't about heroin? To be fair he has, but sweet jesus the brown stuff has provided a lot of his inspiration. Here he weighs up the positive perspective through his rose-tinted smacktacles versus the mundane reality. This being Spiritualized, we suspect mundane reality never really had much of a chance, but his health's loss has been our musical gain.

The Beatles – Tomorrow Never Knows

Okay, so LSD has been responsible for some horrendous music over the years but at least the Fab Four weren't too messed up that they forgot they were a pop band first and scouse psychonauts second.

Velvet Underground – Waiting for my Man

This smack-addled musician thing isn't always fun you know? Sometimes it involves standing around in a bad part of town waiting to score and then being told off by the missus later on for being strung-out. Personally we can't help feel that the whole venture was a bit silly. He could used that $26 to take his girlfriend out for a nice meal. If you're going to be sober the next day anyway,  surely it's better to have scored brownie points with your woman, than score brown off your man?

New Kingdom– Cheap Thrills

Written out of musical history, psychedelic hip-hop crew New Kingdom were explorers of music and consciousness but crucially didn't have a pretentious bone in their bodies.

Minor Threat – Straight Edge

In the spirit of balance we had to have a song that was specifically about NOT taking drugs and it was a toss-up between this and Just Say No by the cast of Grange Hill. If drugs makes people want to write sprawling concept albums or spaced-out jams that deliberately don't go anywhere then it seems that being straight edge makes people write quick, instant and lyrically unambiguous songs.

Sad Kermit – Needle in the Hay

Poor, sweet Elliott Smith was never one to make drugs sound glamourous and fun. He also wasn't one to have much quality youtube footage so we thought we'd give you Sad Kermit's version which is just as affecting but more emotionally confusing.